226 replies to this topic

[Minion]

Flour, on 02 February 2013 - 09:36 PM, said:

People just can't act nice to you.
But you've seen this build in action and you say it does not give you a problem in dungeons or fractals, so people should at least accept it works, for those who can play with it.

I got myself full berserker now (the gear and a GS), nothing else yet. So I'll give it a try and if I find myself dead too much, I guess I'll just go for Strifes build. I don't understand people who yells at you and say evil words. People can just change their build if they want to - I'm sure a lot of those who writes have plenty of money and already a setup of Knights and Berserker to switch between.

If you're a pro player tha can dodge and use the lifesteals to your advantage I'm sure this build is great. Maybe I'm good at it, maybe I suck at it. If I do suck,  I guess I need to go for Strifes build, or quit the game, all depending on how much I suck.

EDIT: Should we really skip using ZD? Gives me pretty big numbers...
But I don't have that much crit yet, since not fully geared, so I guess the attack chain doesn't crit as often as it should at the moment.

However, my concerns are legitimate and I am looking for a rebuttal. However what you're doing is silly and childish. Let GK respond.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

The only rebuttal I need is that guardians are the best damage dealers so they should be dealing damage.  Guardians in an organized party output damage on par with warrior damage (in practice warriors cannot actually be spamming HB on cooldown).  They also have extremely high damage output at range, compared to the warrior, which is almost nothing.  I've already gone over this so I'm not going to repeat it again.  The fact of the matter is that you cannot have too much DPS, but you can have too much defense.  Stacking defensive gear actually makes fights harder because it makes bosses take much longer to kill.  You will note that bosses like Subject Alpha are much easier if you just DPS him down as fast as possible, because if you fail to dodge something you will probably die even if you are stacking defensive gear.  You are also not doing your team any favors because you can't tank in this game.  You can't hold aggro; bosses will still go for other team members and your "tanking" has now actually made them MORE likely to die because the boss is taking so long to kill, and it's still doing damage to everyone in the process.  Even if a boss beats on you and only you for an entire fight, you will still die no matter how defensively specced you are, because your healing simply won't be able to keep up.

Also, you are already playing the most inherently defensive class in the game and you are still saying you will die unless you stack every possible defensive option?  People run with D/D full berserker thieves in dungeons with zero problems, but you can't survive with a class that has passive regen, a shitload of blocks and blinds, and access to literally every defensive boon in the game at the same time?

[Minion]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 03 February 2013 - 09:04 AM, said:

The only rebuttal I need is that guardians are the best damage dealers so they should be dealing damage.  Guardians in an organized party output damage on par with warrior damage (in practice warriors cannot actually be spamming HB on cooldown).  They also have extremely high damage output at range, compared to the warrior, which is almost nothing.  I've already gone over this so I'm not going to repeat it again.  The fact of the matter is that you cannot have too much DPS, but you can have too much defense.  Stacking defensive gear actually makes fights harder because it makes bosses take much longer to kill.  You will note that bosses like Subject Alpha are much easier if you just DPS him down as fast as possible, because if you fail to dodge something you will probably die even if you are stacking defensive gear.  You are also not doing your team any favors because you can't tank in this game.  You can't hold aggro; bosses will still go for other team members and your "tanking" has now actually made them MORE likely to die because the boss is taking so long to kill, and it's still doing damage to everyone in the process.  Even if a boss beats on you and only you for an entire fight, you will still die no matter how defensively specced you are, because your healing simply won't be able to keep up.

Also, you are already playing the most inherently defensive class in the game and you are still saying you will die unless you stack every possible defensive option?  People run with D/D full berserker thieves in dungeons with zero problems, but you can't survive with a class that has passive regen, a shitload of blocks and blinds, and access to literally every defensive boon in the game at the same time?

Okay, I don't think you were responding to me. Nowhere did I say "stack all the defence screw your domoges! we can't survive this content without a tank!" because if your team cannot survive without a tank, you probably should uninstall. I myself run a full berserker/power specced thief, but 50% more dodges>aegis, and the ability to cloak once every two seconds>regen/protection. For self-survival, thief beats guardian, so that comparison is just bad. It's not about self-survival.

Besides, this build is very selfish. You're better off getting as much precision and crit damage as you can to proc AH/Empowering Might to keep spamming party Might. Did you also know that every third swing of a greatsword will net you 1-3 Might also? Do you factor that? Do you not see the synergy between the minor virtue trait, renewed justice, empowering Might and Altruistic Healing? It almost negates the need to dodge at all, increasing your party DPS exponentially. Yet, you've decided you don't want a weapon that can ball all your enemies up into one tight packet, you want a sword. A sword which is shit, no matter how you trait it, it's shit.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Minion, on 03 February 2013 - 07:09 PM, said:

Okay, I don't think you were responding to me. Nowhere did I say "stack all the defence screw your domoges! we can't survive this content without a tank!" because if your team cannot survive without a tank, you probably should uninstall. I myself run a full berserker/power specced thief, but 50% more dodges>aegis, and the ability to cloak once every two seconds>regen/protection. For self-survival, thief beats guardian, so that comparison is just bad. It's not about self-survival.

Besides, this build is very selfish. You're better off getting as much precision and crit damage as you can to proc AH/Empowering Might to keep spamming party Might. Did you also know that every third swing of a greatsword will net you 1-3 Might also? Do you factor that? Do you not see the synergy between the minor virtue trait, renewed justice, empowering Might and Altruistic Healing? It almost negates the need to dodge at all, increasing your party DPS exponentially. Yet, you've decided you don't want a weapon that can ball all your enemies up into one tight packet, you want a sword. A sword which is shit, no matter how you trait it, it's shit.

Sounds more like you're shit, if you need AH because you don't know how to dodge.  You're saying my build is selfish because it focuses on optimizing damage so everyone goes smoother for everyone, but it's not selfish to ditch all your damage so you can take AH, making everything exponentially harder for everyone, just so you don't have to press the dodge button once in a while?  Besides, the fact that you think a guardian is squisher than a thief tells me you'd probably just be dead all the time anyway, with or without.  Why not at least do some damage before you go down?  You also seem to think AH heals your party too, when in fact it only heals you.  I thought this was obvious so I didn't mention it sooner but you seem to be operating under more than a few misconceptions.

For the rest of us who aren't so terrible at the game that they can't survive basic content even with a full-defense spec guardian, this build does all the things you mentioned above, except better.  I like how your argument is basically MORE EMPOWERING MIGHT IS BETTER SO LET'S DROP OUR PRECISION AND CRIT RATE AND HOPE NO ONE NOTICES.

[Flour]

So Minion, you would say this (http://gw2skills.net...FJKyWkrIZRDCOgA) is much better for damage? This is what we should aim for when having full berserker or knight?

So far I had a good time with Guanglai's build, and I'm not even fully geared yet. And, I have not been using the healing food yet either.

Edited by Flour, 03 February 2013 - 08:22 PM.

[Minion]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 03 February 2013 - 08:16 PM, said:

Sounds more like you're shit, if you need AH because you don't know how to dodge.  You're saying my build is selfish because it focuses on optimizing damage so everyone goes smoother for everyone, but it's not selfish to ditch all your damage so you can take AH, making everything exponentially harder for everyone, just so you don't have to press the dodge button once in a while?  Besides, the fact that you think a guardian is squisher than a thief tells me you'd probably just be dead all the time anyway, with or without.  Why not at least do some damage before you go down?  You also seem to think AH heals your party too, when in fact it only heals you.  I thought this was obvious so I didn't mention it sooner but you seem to be operating under more than a few misconceptions.

For the rest of us who aren't so terrible at the game that they can't survive basic content even with a full-defense spec guardian, this build does all the things you mentioned above, except better.  I like how your argument is basically MORE EMPOWERING MIGHT IS BETTER SO LET'S DROP OUR PRECISION AND CRIT RATE AND HOPE NO ONE NOTICES.

crit damage is a pretty cool guy, it make crits do moar domoges and doesn't afraid of anything.

Flour, on 03 February 2013 - 08:21 PM, said:

So Minion, you would say this (http://gw2skills.net...FJKyWkrIZRDCOgA) is much better for damage? This is what we should aim for when having full berserker or knight?

So far I had a good time with Guanglai's build, and I'm not even fully geared yet. And, I have not been using the healing food yet either.

It provides greater team-DPS if you were to do the numbers for a team of five. Berserker armour with Knights trinkets (since knights trinkets offer more precision than ruby)

Edited by Minion, 03 February 2013 - 11:07 PM.

[Gilles VI]

Playboy, on 30 January 2013 - 08:07 PM, said:

I almost can't tell if this is a serious build. With such minimal toughness/armor and vit, how can you survive in high level fractals?

You can't survive with just high armor.
High level fractals one-shot you everywhere, so you have to rely on skills/experience to survive, thus toughness/vit has no use, so you can go full berserker anyway.

[Playboy]

Just as a warning to anyone else posting, OP will call you an idiot who sucks at the game if you question his build. Hell, he'll even misquote you horrible to make you seem even less respectable.

[Minion]

Playboy, on 03 February 2013 - 09:54 PM, said:

Just as a warning to anyone else posting, OP will call you an idiot who sucks at the game if you question his build. Hell, he'll even misquote you horrible to make you seem even less respectable.

I don't think it's fair to target the OP on a personal level, I believe s/he suffers from the dunning krüger effect on this topic especially. We must be kind and let fact alone be the driving force of this discussion. Instead it has turned into a love affair between Flour and GK and everyone else standing outside their door with pitchforks.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Minion, on 03 February 2013 - 08:25 PM, said:

crit damage is a pretty cool guy, it make crits do moar domoges and doesn't afraid of anything.





It provides greater team-DPS if you were to do the numbers for a team of five. Berserker armour with Knights trinkets (since knights trinkets offer more precision than ruby)

I don't think you quite understand how damage works.  That build is basically dropping a 21% overall damage boost in exchange for 20% more damage on crits only, even before you factor in tthe loss of crit chance and power.  I think that should net you around 2200 damage base and fewer party might stacks (since your crit rate is much lower), so Minion is wrong on both counts.

When you build around DPS you need to consider the tradeoffs you're making for any given choice of gear and traits.  Emerald jewels are NOT the best for damage.  That's just silly.  To get that extra 10 points in Precision (which is worth less than .5% crit chance), you are giving up 10 power (which is about .6% overall damage) and 3% crit damage.  I really shouldn't have to explain this at all.  It should be super obvious.  If it's not, I'm sorry, but I can't help you.

[Minion]

GS deals more damage. It transfers more Might and Binding is not available on any other set. AH is used to absorb damage so you don't have to dodge often or retreat, allowing you to keep hitting your target. not using Inspired Virtue and Renewed Justice is absurd if you want party DPS to remain high. Supplement precision loss with sigil of accuracy or perception +food. Again, once you hit the plateau of 70-80% crit chance with fury, you're wasting your time and should have specced more crit damage.

Anyway, last post from me on this matter because OP is talking out of their ass. They are not imagining any real scenarios and have nothing to support their claims but fictional numbers. Good day.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

GS doesn't "transfer" might lol.  In fact, it will give less might overall because your crit chance is so much lower, so less EM and Strength procs.  Are you just making stuff up or do you genuinely believe what you're saying?

Also, do you even run dungeons?  Because I'm starting to suspect that you don't, if you think just having AH will enable you to sit and facetank bosses without having to dodge.  In fact, if you're worried about dodging, having a shield or focus is much more efficient, because it enables you to block attacks that would otherwise OHKO you.  AH is basically just an extra, relatively strong regen.  It doesn't make you invincible and it certainly won't save you from a boss focusing on you.

Also, lol @ thinking Inspired Virtue's 3 stacks of might for 5 seconds every 30 seconds makes any sort of difference to overall party DPS.

[Minion]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 04 February 2013 - 02:57 AM, said:

GS doesn't "transfer" might lol.  In fact, it will give less might overall because your crit chance is so much lower, so less EM and Strength procs.  Are you just making stuff up or do you genuinely believe what you're saying?

Also, do you even run dungeons?  Because I'm starting to suspect that you don't, if you think just having AH will enable you to sit and facetank bosses without having to dodge.  In fact, if you're worried about dodging, having a shield or focus is much more efficient, because it enables you to block attacks that would otherwise OHKO you.  AH is basically just an extra, relatively strong regen.  It doesn't make you invincible and it certainly won't save you from a boss focusing on you.

Also, lol @ thinking Inspired Virtue's 3 stacks of might for 5 seconds every 30 seconds makes any sort of difference to overall party DPS.

You can't read.

Ignoring renewal on kill, you gain 3 Might for whole party. How is that not more damage? Also, burn. AH diffuses the damage that goes through all your blocks, Protection and passive regen.

I do about 15 dungeon paths a day, fyi, but I'm not here to argue as any authority, just to pull you back to Earth.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Minion, on 04 February 2013 - 05:47 AM, said:

You can't read.

Ignoring renewal on kill, you gain 3 Might for whole party. How is that not more damage? Also, burn. AH diffuses the damage that goes through all your blocks, Protection and passive regen.

I do about 15 dungeon paths a day, fyi, but I'm not here to argue as any authority, just to pull you back to Earth.

And where are you getting the points to put into Inspired Virtues for that overall 1% party boost?  Are you going to give up 10% damage from Fiery Wrath?  365 precision's worth of crit chance from RH Strength?  Constant 6-7 stacks of might from Empowering Might?  5% crit damage and 3% crit chance from Retributive Armor?

Inspired Virtues is a tiny, tiny boost to party damage that isn't anywhere worth what you'd lose by taking it.  Ask someone to explain to you what "opportunity cost" means.  I'm not going to do it.

Incidentally, if you have a better build to suggest that deals more damage than mine with an equivalent level of survivability, let's see it.  Otherwise it just looks like you're upset because the build doesn't just hold your hand and crutch for your inability to dodge or block properly.

[Edath]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 03 February 2013 - 11:47 PM, said:

I don't think you quite understand how damage works.  That build is basically dropping a 21% overall damage boost in exchange for 20% more damage on crits only, even before you factor in tthe loss of crit chance and power.  I think that should net you around 2200 damage base and fewer party might stacks (since your crit rate is much lower), so Minion is wrong on both counts.

When you build around DPS you need to consider the tradeoffs you're making for any given choice of gear and traits.  Emerald jewels are NOT the best for damage.  That's just silly.  To get that extra 10 points in Precision (which is worth less than .5% crit chance), you are giving up 10 power (which is about .6% overall damage) and 3% crit damage.  I really shouldn't have to explain this at all.  It should be super obvious.  If it's not, I'm sorry, but I can't help you.

Minion, on 04 February 2013 - 05:47 AM, said:

You can't



Ignoring renewal on kill, you gain 3 Might for whole party. How is that not more damage? Also, burn. AH diffuses the damage that goes through all your blocks, Protection and passive regen.

I do about 15 dungeon paths a day, fyi, but I'm not here to argue as any authority, just to pull you back to Earth.

Well mate, sorry to say but OP is right regarding AH. You really don't need it. Myself, I'm running 10/30/0/25/5 or 10/25/0/30/5 or 10/25/0/25/10 for certain high lvl fotm- groups. This with full zerker gear and runes are either 6x eagle, 6x ruby orb or 2xhoelbrak+boon duration. Zerker jewels and weaps aswel.

You claim to run 15paths a day yet u can't Dodge? Imo this shows a huge skill difference. 14k hp and 2.2k armor is plenty for guards due to the nature of our class. Mainly if stuff like high lvl fractals one-shots u regardless of hp and armor. Block,dodge and blind+virtues and utilities give plenty of (party)defensives. I've been running this build for months now, and tbh it works really well! I've had numerous ppl asking me to share my/this kind of build, cause they can't deny the strengths it provides.

Anyone stating they're in need of defensive gear hasn't grown to know the full expanse of the guardian class. Op is right on most fronts imho

[Minion]

Edath, on 04 February 2013 - 07:41 AM, said:

You claim to run 15paths a day yet u can't Dodge? Imo this shows a huge skill difference.

Anyone stating they're in need of defensive gear hasn't grown to know the full expanse of the guardian class. Op is right on most fronts imho

I highlighted for ease of seeing where you and OP misread. I said don't, not can't. It's just not necessary to dodge so often, unless some lethal AoE skill is coming my way like Alpha's AoE skills. The less time you spend dodging, the more damage you will deal. That's obvious, to use OP's phrase. Neither did I say I require defensive gear. Berserkers and Knights trinkets for the precision are not at all defensive; the toughness from emerald aren't major at all.

I see you're still using inspired virtues and renewed jewstice though, unlike OP. The trait line provides a massive crit damage bonus as compensation for speccing survivability anyway, so it really doesn't matter. You get to hit more often, crit just as much but deal more damage from each crit.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Minion, on 04 February 2013 - 08:10 AM, said:

You get to hit more often, crit just as much but deal more damage from each crit.

You do realize that even if you only look at crits, you're actually going to hit for less, because you're reducing your base damage by not taking Fiery Wrath and Radiant Power?  A crit for 160% damage boosted by 21% will hit for 193.6% of base damage, compared to a crit for 180% even.

[foofad]

Hey GK, I'm running something similar at the moment but using a greatsword as primary and scepter/focus or scepter/shield as secondary. Mostly because I haven't used greatswords in a long time and I forgot how much fun they were; Sword/shield and sword/focus aren't as entertaining to me at the moment.

I'm trying to squeeze in a little bit more survivability, so instead of Retributive Armor I'm using Purity. Heal/utilities are Shelter, Signet of Judgement, SYG!, and Smite Condition. I'm swapping SoJ out for situational utilities as needed and hanging on to SYG and Smite Condition to deal with knockdowns and those "oops 25 stacks of bleed" moments.

My main question is: Do you think I'll squeeze out more damage by using 30 Radiance, or 25 Radiance and 5 Virtues for the extra might? With pie and oil I'm hitting something like 65% or so for crit chance with 25 Radiance.

Gonna try this in WvW at some point and see how I do. Probably badly. Who knows.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

foofad, on 04 February 2013 - 06:10 PM, said:

Hey GK, I'm running something similar at the moment but using a greatsword as primary and scepter/focus or scepter/shield as secondary. Mostly because I haven't used greatswords in a long time and I forgot how much fun they were; Sword/shield and sword/focus aren't as entertaining to me at the moment.

I'm trying to squeeze in a little bit more survivability, so instead of Retributive Armor I'm using Purity. Heal/utilities are Shelter, Signet of Judgement, SYG!, and Smite Condition. I'm swapping SoJ out for situational utilities as needed and hanging on to SYG and Smite Condition to deal with knockdowns and those "oops 25 stacks of bleed" moments.

My main question is: Do you think I'll squeeze out more damage by using 30 Radiance, or 25 Radiance and 5 Virtues for the extra might? With pie and oil I'm hitting something like 65% or so for crit chance with 25 Radiance.

Gonna try this in WvW at some point and see how I do. Probably badly. Who knows.

Honestly I'm not a big fan of Virtues 5.  I find 3 stacks of might for 5 seconds every 30s rather pointless and you don't use Courage or Resolve enough that the other boons make any sort of difference.  Even if you're running GS you might as well just keep 30 points in Radiance and switch between Perfect Inscriptions for the extra 5% damage reduction on SoJ and RH Strength when you need a scepter.

[foofad]

That's kind of what I was thinking. Even with Renewed Justice, I have a hard time remembering to pop it every time it refreshes, otherwise it would be pretty neat if you could get more like six stacks of might from it in a trash heavy fight. Right now I'm just using it for extra CC.

[KaptainO]

Bear in mind when calculating EM and SoS procs their cd is 1s and your AA swings every 0.8s - so the cd is effectively 1.6s.

t=0.0s swing, crit, proc EM
t=0.8 swing, crit, EM on cd
t=1.6s swing, crit, proc EM

and so on.

(you might hit the 1s cooldown when using GS2)

[indure]

Minion, on 02 February 2013 - 05:31 PM, said:

Your problem here, ignoring your arrogance, is the fact that you're trying to find maximum damage on a guardian, instead of the most useful in PvE situations. It's about dungeons, really, no one needs a build for world completion because it's petty stuff.

You're suggesting sword/focus over a greatsword, which sounds fun but the greatsword has a larger swing anyway and Binding Chains is the greatest skill in the game. Why would you suggest not to use that in the face of +15% crit chance? Your traits are also messed up; you're thinking about the base trait stats instead of the skills themselves. Ignore the stats for a moment and consider your armour and trinkets offer enough to sacrifice a couple of stats to gain better skills for your build. A guardian *should* be an anchor for the party, but they can also be very domogy with greatsword, as Strife says.

tl;dr, you're building your ideas off the back of the wrong "superior theory" and you are a siwwy person. Alternatively, you can get your thread renamed "highest DPS but also most useless guardian build!"

In GuanglaiKangyi's defense and from what I have observed when in strong groups or while watching extremely skilled players, is that skilled players don't need any extra support. Optimal builds, strong teamwork, and high skill levels negate the need for a support build. Good players can take care of themselves which means that the best way to help a team is to have high damage so content is cleared faster. Support is always welcomed, but should not come at the cost of damage. And to be perfectly honest you shouldn't accuse GK of creating a selfish build, when arguably AH is the most selfish build a Guardian can create since it provides almost nothing at all to the group.

Edited by indure, 04 February 2013 - 08:53 PM.

[Minion]

Having played with the build now and messed about with the sword, it has to be said; the sword is shit. No matter what traits you try to compliment it with it's still shit. The greatsword is better in every way apart from this magical +15% crit chance, which is superfluous anyway.

So instead, let's look at traits and assume you'll not be stupid and will use the optimal weapon sets (greatsword+wand/focus). Immediately this means you don't have to max out precision because there are no useful trait skills for a greatsword. You can easily compensate for the lack of precision with armour, trinkets and food, and also retributive armour. You will have plenty of toughness if you take knights trinkets, which offers both precision and toughness as primary stats. You can then take a sigil of perception on an offhand weapon and then use sigil of accuracy on your greatsword, which you will camp more often than not, for the majority of the fight. This way you can easily achieve over 60% permanent precision, with more from perception and food (and fury when you get it).

The higher you raise toughness/crit damage, the higher your crit chance and crit damage will be (no shit, right?) So if you max it out and take Altruistic Healing, you will be able to swing as often as you like without the need to dodge, other than when you draw aggro yourself. This means more criticals, more damage FROM the criticals and more Might stacks delivered to the rest of the party from Empowered Might.

Now, why do you hate Virtue of Justice? Are you terrible at remembering to trigger virtues on recharge? Because that is essentially what you should be doing. If you play properly, targeting each enemy, balling them up and focusing each one as a party, you will be using VoJ every 1-3 seconds on a regular dungeon enemy.  Add that to the Might from Empowering Might you will get every swing of the greatsword (internal cooldown of EM is 1s) and you get a decent amount of spammable party-wide Might. Also note that making VoJ cause blind with the trait means more vulnerability. Vulnerability from leap of faith and VoJ stacks fast when you're mowing down enemies.

The reason why the greatsword is far superior to the sword/focus deal is quite simple; Binding Chains and the autoattack chain. Every third swing gives you one Might per enemy you hit. With Binding, that's easily 3+ Might from that for yourself, as well as each block=Might. This compensates for the lack of speccing into power, but what can you realistically lose in this setup?


You wanted an opposing build, so here it is:
Berserker armour of either ruby/lyssa/eagle, knights trinkets. berserker greatsword of superior accuracy with whatever else.
0/15/30/20/5
blind exposure, retributive armour, Purity, Altruistic Healing, Superior Aria, Empowering Might.


A quick tl:dr;

1.I am not arguing that you need support. I am saying your damage a shit and you're overloading on precision and ignoring crit damage/might/vuln stacks.

2. Claiming one using AH is a cop-out to playing better is not a good argument. It has also been argued ad nauseum.

Edited by Minion, 05 February 2013 - 05:18 AM.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Minion, on 05 February 2013 - 04:28 AM, said:

Having played with the build now and messed about with the sword, it has to be said; the sword is shit. No matter what traits you try to compliment it with it's still shit. The greatsword is better in every way apart from this magical +15% crit chance, which is superfluous anyway.

So instead, let's look at traits and assume you'll not be stupid and will use the optimal weapon sets (greatsword+wand/focus). Immediately this means you don't have to max out precision because there are no useful trait skills for a greatsword. You can easily compensate for the lack of precision with armour, trinkets and food, and also retributive armour. You will have plenty of toughness if you take knights trinkets, which offers both precision and toughness as primary stats. You can then take a sigil of perception on an offhand weapon and then use sigil of accuracy on your greatsword, which you will camp more often than not, for the majority of the fight. This way you can easily achieve over 60% permanent precision, with more from perception and food (and fury when you get it).

The higher you raise toughness/crit damage, the higher your crit chance and crit damage will be (no shit, right?) So if you max it out and take Altruistic Healing, you will be able to swing as often as you like without the need to dodge, other than when you draw aggro yourself. This means more criticals, more damage FROM the criticals and more Might stacks delivered to the rest of the party from Empowered Might.

Now, why do you hate Virtue of Justice? Are you terrible at remembering to trigger virtues on recharge? Because that is essentially what you should be doing. If you play properly, targeting each enemy, balling them up and focusing each one as a party, you will be using VoJ every 1-3 seconds on a regular dungeon enemy.  Add that to the Might from Empowering Might you will get every swing of the greatsword (internal cooldown of EM is 1s) and you get a decent amount of spammable party-wide Might. Also note that making VoJ cause blind with the trait means more vulnerability. Vulnerability from leap of faith and VoJ stacks fast when you're mowing down enemies.

The reason why the greatsword is far superior to the sword/focus deal is quite simple; Binding Chains and the autoattack chain. Every third swing gives you one Might per enemy you hit. With Binding, that's easily 3+ Might from that for yourself, as well as each block=Might. This compensates for the lack of speccing into power, but what can you realistically lose in this setup?


You wanted an opposing build, so here it is:
Berserker armour of either ruby/lyssa/eagle, knights trinkets. berserker greatsword of superior accuracy with whatever else.
0/15/30/20/5
blind exposure, retributive armour, Purity, Altruistic Healing, Superior Aria, Empowering Might.


A quick tl:dr;

1.I am not arguing that you need support. I am saying your damage a shit and you're overloading on precision and ignoring crit damage/might/vuln stacks.

2. Claiming one using AH is a cop-out to playing better is not a good argument. It has also been argued ad nauseum.

Let's keep this simple then, since otherwise you won't get it:

1) 30 in Valor is a huge hit to DPS due to what you have to give up to get it.  The highest DPS setup for GS doesn't even take any points in Valor; it's 25/25/0/20/0 in trait spread, so regardless of what weapon you use you still won't be getting AH.  With the right traits (i.e. RH Strength) sword hits almost as hard as GS so claiming it's "shit" just shows your ignorance.

2) More is always better.  There's no such as "enough" crit chance, if you can get more.  I could arbitrarily decide that 2k DPS is "enough" DPS and just throw all my remaining points into Virtues or something similarly pointless, but that's not optimal either.  If you don't care about optimal, then fine, but don't waste my time if you don't.

3) Your build sucks.  You will hit for no damage while everyone else laughs at you.  I disclaim all responsibility for any public ridicule you may and probably will experience running that sorry excuse for a build.

[Minion]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 05 February 2013 - 06:22 AM, said:

2) More is always better.  There's no such as "enough" crit chance

So having over 100% crit chance isn't superfluous? Or do you not know how percentages work?

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Minion, on 05 February 2013 - 06:42 AM, said:

So having over 100% crit chance isn't superfluous? Or do you not know how percentages work?

When will you ever have 100% crit chance?  My build gets you 75% crit chance.  Yours gets, like, 50%.  Neither are anywhere near 100%.  With Omnom you'll have something like +3% crit chance, and fury gives an extra 20%, so you'll be at 98%.  If you want to use Eagle runes or maintenance oils and you're worried about going "over" with fury, just replace Accuracy with Force and/or replace Retributive Armor with Purity.  There are plenty of ways to hit 100% crit chance even without dropping your DPS to near nothing just because you're worried about "wasting" fury, when guardians can't even keep it up 100%.  I don't see why it even matters though since the build you suggested has nowhere near 100% crit chance, so it's not like you were dropping sources of precision to put into crit damage.  You took the points out of Zeal instead, which I will note is power, not precision.

Also, I find it funny that despite you whining endlessly about my build not having enough crit damage, the build you suggested has even less crit damage than mine.  Why not just come out and admit that you just want the AH crutch?  At least I can accept that.

[Skibba]

GK, I'm going to try out a take on your build. I'm currently running a AH/EM build. 0/0/30/30/10. Basically Strife's fractal build but using 2x sanc/2x water/2x monk boon duration runes rather than Soldier's runes. Based on what TheKnox has said, and by looking at his spreadsheet, I'm probably going to stick with GS rather than 1H sword. It's now just a case of trying to figure out what to drop in order to free up 10 points to put into Virtues.

Best I've managed to come up with so far is:-

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUUQNAR7dlYg6C33xKEfIFSWhC0WQNj45eweoRwXGB;ToAg0ynEOJdS9kyJquMeJ8y1F

I'd switch the 10 point Virtues ability between Unscathed Contender & Master of Consecrations depending on whether or not I need a Consecration or want to do more damage, I'd also switch the Honor line 10 point ability between Superior Aria & Writ of Exaltation, if for example I know the fight is going to be range so would be using scepter/focus, so won't be laying down Symbol of Wrath from the greatsword.

When running Fractals, do you find you have no need for 10 points in virtues for the reduced CD and longer duration of consecration abilities?

[zosek]

Hey,

great build. I'll defenitely give it a try. Just a quick question. How do you deal with conditions? Maybe i missed it, but i cannot find any skill that would remove conditions (apart from the signet, but that is passive and it doesnt remove when you want to)

Edited by zosek, 05 February 2013 - 03:49 PM.

[GammaWolf]

The point of right handed strength is to give higher crit chance while using defensive gear.

When going zerker gear, maxing the crit damage line is essential which works great on guardian because you get toughness as well.

The standard AH build, but with full zerker gear would be more effective as a dpser in that you would still be providing a lot of team buffs and self-healing.

Sword is also not that great mainly because it doesn't get a symbol.

[Skibba]

GammaWolf, on 05 February 2013 - 04:06 PM, said:

The point of right handed strength is to give higher crit chance while using defensive gear.

When going zerker gear, maxing the crit damage line is essential which works great on guardian because you get toughness as well.

The standard AH build, but with full zerker gear would be more effective as a dpser in that you would still be providing a lot of team buffs and self-healing.

Why is RH strength only for use with defensive gear? It gives the same amount of crit in defensive gear as it does in DPS gear.

If you go full Berserker gear and put 30 points in valor without taking any of the major traits and then test your DPS, and then if you tried the same test in full Berserker gear and put 30 points into Radiance, your DPS would be higher on the second test.

Also, what "team buffs" does the valor trait line provide that would be used in the standard AH/EM build? The traits only benefit you. You could say that AH heals you, which means you're less likely to die, which in turn is 'buffing' the group, but the OP is trying to offer up a build which doesn't rely on AH as he feels it's a 'crutch' which people are using to stay alive, whilst dishing out sub optimal DPS.

This is a DPS build with DPS gear. Not a DPS build with defensive gear for balance, or a defensive build with DPS gear for balance.