chullster

Hello,

as titled, if I buy a new backpack cover skin, and put it on my engineer does selecting various kits change the skin to the kits backpack skin or does the quaggan/jet pack stay visible?

Just a quickie, posting for ease of use.

This is my one-handed variation of a DPS build when I want a change from GS. Also sword and shield looks great, and a shadowstep is just icing on the cake.

The second weapon set is still shield off-hand, but scepter as main hand with force sigil like the sword.

http://gw2skills.net...DT5iIq2IuIa1A-e

Shares a lot in common with other builds either I or others have posted, pretty cookie cutter.

I love my F1 key VoJ spam, so that's in with the usual AoE blind, burn, 3 x vulnerability and 3 x party wide might stacking per press/kill.

Used as many +% damage traits as I could

+10% damage to burning foes
+10% damage to foes with conditions
+5% damage when using a sword
and a situational +20% damage when aegis is on me.

I love my shouts so they get traited as well as might on critical hits. Smite condition for when you get an annoying 2 minute cripple or something, otherwise conditions can be ignored.

If you do fractals, you can swap the adept virtues major trait when you want Wall of Reflection buffed.

Sigils are Force + Fire, my current favourite combo.

Runes are + 40% boon duration.

I feel this is the best DPS build for a guardian using one-handed weapons purely from a gameplay experience.

Using a standard cookie-cutter mm build:

Simple build link: http://gw2skills.net...5SQ2IeQzeDJFA-e

Detailed build link: http://gw2buildcraft...s.3z.3y.40.4g|e

After leveling my guardian, war and ele up in fractals it was time to try my necro.

I tried a conditions build, not so good as you can clash with any other condition damage players, the cap, and engineers do it better anyway in fractals with grenades.

I tried a full glass cannon power build, great in the open world and dungeons, big numbers, not so good in PuG fractals groups.

Both became pretty dull very quickly as I started grinding levels, so for jollies when a guildy was desperate for a slot to be filled in a level 38 stuck-@-shamen-boss, I thought for laughs I'd use minions, and had a whole lot less problems than I imagined.

So when I went back to leveling him up I stuck with them, thinking where are they useful, what do they bring and how best to use them combined with my own weapon skills/class mechanics.

In some places like the end of the maw fractal, the ice fractal end boss, or the arm seals of the colossus fractal, there is no point in using minions so I just swap the heal, utility and elite skill to kill off any minions left over from clearing the first parts, replacing them with consume condition, well of suffering, BiP, spectral walk or locust signet, and lich form.


Some general points about using minions

Pros:

1. Distraction; while an enemy is hitting your minions, they aren't hitting you or your team, or even chasing them. Lava elements, Grawl trash mobs, krait in the water, dredge groups, harpies spike attack are all handy places to have some meat bags around to take some hits for you. Mossman spends his time wasting axes on minions cutting out some of the insta-dead moments for your team

2. AoE damage mitigation. There's a 5 target limit on a lot of AoE attacks apparently, I use 6 minioins plus any jaggeds that are around.  They can nullify some of the one-shot kill AoE attacks, letting you DPS away or saving you from going down etc.

3. Minion utility skills.

I use bone minions exploding attack on recharge if there's a some AoE needed, combo fields or I'm at full health.

The bone fiend is great for snaring a single target like the arch diviner at the cliffside fractal, or the veteran grawls trying to push people into the lava or the champ fire ele/ettin in the asuran/uncategorized fractal, mossman too becomes much easier with perma snare and immobilize spam. Just activate his skill on recharge.

Mr flesh wurm is a trooper and a life saver, you can plonk him down and he'll plink away leeching health for you and damaging the enemy. In the dredge fractal I've found him to be a great way of running the bombs or just as an "oh shit!" button or stun breaker. He is also immune to the lava on the ground at the shamen end boss, I thought he'd just degen from burning, but he didn't, also didn't take any damage when I noticed I'd put him an empty lava pool which filled with lava after a few moments. Very handy for moving quickly around a fixed area, like the ascalon fracal end boss encounter.

Not much to be said about the golem, great fun to watch when he charges, plowing a furrow through mobs removing some defiant stacks, I use it on recharge most of the time. With the asuran fractal while clearing harpies, sometimes I swap to lich form for the parts where 3 or 4 of them can hit your team at once for the stability, but most of the time I use axe/focus and go into melee range so any melee minions will contribute damage as well as the ranged ones.  

4. Minions contribute damage more often than most of the other utility skills.

Wells are good, but not spammable or moveable. BiP is good but is only a boon for yourself which sometimes others provide. Minions however are straight forward, summon, use utilites when required, and leave them to it, they'll just keep grinding away mobs health and keeping healing you. I use auto attack on axe to swap their targets as it seems the most responsive skill, there's a video somewhere pointing out how the minion AI works and why they seem to just hang around sometimes. I can't find it, but basically to make them attack use a single target attack skill and on the 2nd attack they should start attacking your target. Using AoE to control them is iffy at best.

5. Healing

Since bloodthrist got fixed and now effects vampiric master, combined with the minor vampiric trait, means you have a lot of small packets of healing coming in. Having such a large HP pool means that after a big hit, it'll seem like it's taking a while to refill if you don't activate your heal skill, and I do sometimes, but most of the time I don't bother and carrying on my rotations letting the minions and my own life steal heal me back up. It feels in play like an AH guardian and with a necros big health pool means you can survive some very nasty hits and keeping going.

This constant drip of healing means I'm thinking of replacing the ruby orbs with scholar runes as you are over 90% health most of the time, and if not, soon will be. Quite often in a not-so-good PuG team you'll be the last one alive and finish a section on your own. I've had people think I was a tank (eeewwww!! dirty word) and when I point out I am full berserkers they are surprised.



Cons:

1. Minions die easily. But, don't worry about it. You're traited to recharge the summon skills, just make sure there is none waiting to be resummoned, even in a panic moment, summon your minions back on recharge. They're undead anyway and would be OP imo if they could tank mobs, get used to the fact they're supposed to be resummoned often.

2. Setting events off before your team is ready like Old Tom in the asuran fractal. Keep them back out of aggro range, bearing in mind they stand all around you, including in front of you.

3. Cluttered battlefield. They get everywhere.

4. Minion AI, I know it's not good, but I found I can command them and they respond ok if as already mentioned I use a single target attack and don't expect them to start fighting until the 2nd attack hits. With axe, that's responsive enough for me.

5. People think you're bad as you have minions. So prove them wrong by putting them away when they end up being a hinderence.


A separate note about Death Shroud:

I just reminded myself, in the asuran fractal when fighting harpies don't use death shroud, save it in case you're knocked off the platforms, use it as soon as you are knocked off and you will appear at the start position only you took no damage and are not downed.

Same for any falling damage, DS will stop you taking the damage, making the falling damage trait useless. This will probably be nerfed soon.

There is probably lots of little quirks about using minions in fractals I've either forgotten (sometimes they get completely ignored and spam their attacks on a boss through out the whole fight) or not noticed myself, and I've only used them up to level 38. Now I only play level 20 on the four characters I've leveled so far, as I only do fractals for the skins rewards wise anyway. Over level 38 I have no idea how they'll perform, they die often anyway, so I doubt it'll be much different.

Weapon Choices:

Axe is used because dagger though the best damage is a bit dangerous in PuGs, axe also buffs your party and minion damage with skill 1. Skill 2 is nice damage and if you use a fractal axe skin, looks awesome, like a catherine wheel firework. Skill 3 use on recharge.

Focus skill 4 spam on recharge, more damage boosts. Focus skill 5 is a great snare and more importantly can speed up boss fights like dredge or asuran fractals, removing protection buffs.


Staff is a back-up weapon, useful when you're running around the fire in the ice fractal, or a quick aoe snare/fear in the dredge one. With a sigil of fire and the fact it pierces, it's good in dense groups.

Hello,

tried to find a DPS build for a staff, nothing much happening there, but I did a fractal run the other day with an ele, and I nicked his build, tried it, liked and thought I'd post it.

It's a shared aura build, but using staff not D/D. It seems particularly good in fractals and makes the runs go faster, and seemly easier.

http://gw2buildcraft...1n.24.25.26.0|e

Gear/weapons are all berserker same as a D/D build, but instead of cantrips, you spam signets. I swapped to +boon duration runes for this, found I can maintain fury and swiftness on my team, and protection nearly perma, and everything is on fire as a bonus, allowing your team of zerkers to go a little crazy.

Useage: As soon as you load in spam all your signets on cooldown including the heal signet, use magnetic aura on earth staff on cool down as you pass through that attunement.

The rest of the time you do your usual staff rotation, using the blast finisher with fire and water fields while spreading the conditions and CC you have available.

I know there's no blasting staff trait or points in arcane. You can run a more selfish version where you use the auras on yourself only but I found the fractal runs easier if I spread the love.

Ok, so I've tried the 0/0/30/30/10 and the 0/10/30/30/0 and even GuanglaiKangvi DPS build out and there's nothing wrong with any of those. Don't think this is a new awesome/pro/leet improvement, they just don't feel right for me, so this is just something different.

I tried an aggressive mace build, 2-handed only, 1-handed only weapons, all sorts of variations and have finally settled on the build I present, I just like it.

I'm not saying it's the best damage, or the best support or even a jack-of-all-trades. I like it for seeing high damage (for a guardian) and the fact I can change only a couple of traits and utility skills to make fractals so much easier for me, and presumably my team.

Utilities swapped in and out for various fractals as required:

Retreat - Jade maw underwater and open world pve
Stand your ground - nearly always on my bar for the boons, stun break and quick recharge
Hold the line - high damage fractals like grawl or the boss at the asuran one
Save yourselves - jade maw for stun break and trait related damage buff, cliffside or other condition heavy areas
Wall of reflection - Projectile heavy fractals like Grawl, asuran or ascalon
Shield of the Avenger- more situational, fragile but longer lasting projectile absorption it can stop projectiles that will pass through WoR, like old toms attacks.

Things I really wanted:

1.  

F1 Spam: I love it, aoe blind, vulnerability  burning, party wide might stacking (x3) and self retaliation stacking, every single time you press it, and recharged after every kill. Tried everything I can to not use it in a build, final result? not happening, I like it too much.

2.

+% damage traits, my favourite being unscathed contender, as it's the biggest one available. I tried to fit in others, but ended up with those you see in the build for various reasons, either to get them required using a major trait I didn't like, or a trait elsewhere offered more. If anyone is bothered I'll explain the choices I made.

3.

At least 20 points in virtues so I can use +consecration duration/reduce consecration cooldown and spirit weapons last +50% at the same time for certain fractals, like the Grawl one or the asuran one, maximizing projectile defense.

4.

Sounds sad, but a way to go "super-turbo-nitro mode!!!!". I'm 34 years old, and I remember the looks on michael knights face which he hit "that button" or in Mad Max when he pulled the red switch on the gear stick, that's what I want!

When I get to the jade maw fractal, the underwater one or in open world pve or dungeons without too much ranged attack, I dump the consecrations, switch the virtue line to +damage traits and more aegis, roll into battle spam the 3 shouts, SYG/Retreat/Save yourselves, triggering 2x 10% damage boost (though one is 9% I think) and the +20% one also.

I see a sudden 39-40% boost in damage, like I'm flicking a red switch, and you can easily see in the damage numbers. You can also see when you're not fulfilling the criteria, like aegis going down, so you use the F3 to put it back up, do some blind, move around the back of the enemy....it gives you something to do where you can see results (bigger damage numbers) for your efforts.

Ok enough waffle, 2 links, one simple though out of date to get the traits/basics and another link for the whole 9-yards.

Simple Link:  http://gw2skills.net...8S4lrrVBjC2jMJA

Full build link with gear:  http://gw2buildcraft....u28b.p16|0.0|e


Things you may notice and wonder; why?

1. No Altruistic Healing?

I kind of got used to having it, it's severely powerful form of self healing, but that's 30 points for a self heal, though good. The other traits though good, just didn't appeal as much as others. I thought the 30% crit damage reduction would be noticeable, but I seem to do more damage using +%dmg buffs. Also after doing fractals on a glass cannon warrior, I found I could do ok without it.

2. Why the GM trait in Honor? and why not 2 handed mastery?

I don't like using traits that restrict weapon choice. I do use a staff for the Charr fractal, stopping those warriors from one-shotting people is a good move, but other than that I use scepter for a ranged weapon, and either shield or focus for the off hand. I would have gone down the one-handed route but I like the GS skills, like the aoe pull or the currently OP bugged leap of faith.

With nothing in valor conditions could be iffy as no purity or signet cleaning once every 10 secs. I prefer on demand cleaning, and I prefer condition flipping to boons rather than just removal, I prefer party wide flipping even better, and I prefer +boon duration runes rather than runes of the soldier for instance.

The +dmg with low endurance is good too, but if I wanted damage why not 10 in zeal for fiery wrath? Well the minor trait there is rubbish, and the +dmg relies (though pretty easy to attain) conditions to be met on the enemies, where as elusive power, I get the buff for something I do, which is easier still.


TL;DR boon duration non weapon-specific build, leaning towards DPS, with no AH or toughness, uses skill/trait mechanics for defense. Full berserkers gear, boon duration runes and flat dmg buff sigils. Dare I say it?; a fun (for me at least) build