Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[Gray_Matter]

I was busy buying gems to get 8 of the sickles and now the price has spiked because of the char slot. I got a slot but it's a bit of a pain.

[Lane]

I've been sitting on gems since March. I bought up a bunch expecting character slots to be one of their daily sales that month, but they never were. -_- Least I stockpiled before the mining pick drove up the gem exchange.

[Deleted]

Arrow cart repellant is starting to work on me. Anyone got any suggestions for a game worth checking out?

[Meledelion]

@maarius

on that website does it show how much the total cost is? It's quite annoying to only see the unit price

[Lane]

I didn't want to derail the Dragon Bash thread back to discussing armor models, so I'm posting them here. :P Saw these posted on the forums, they're speculated as being the new gem store armor sets.





I think they look ugly, although, the males definitely got the better end of the deal this time. The thread has chat codes, maybe I'll see if they look any better on different races with different dye colors, but I'm not too optimistic. :P

[sergel02]

I didn't want to derail the Dragon Bash thread back to discussing armor models, so I'm posting them here. :P Saw these posted on the forums, they're speculated as being the new gem store armor sets.





I think they look ugly, although, the males definitely got the better end of the deal this time. The thread has chat codes, maybe I'll see if they look any better on different races with different dye colors, but I'm not too optimistic. :P

I like it overall, but the asymmetrical shoulders are such a turn off for me, which is why i can't play a medium armor class. still waiting for them to get more pants.

[Black Rider]

Guys where I can browse item sets?

[carnifex2005]

Guys where I can browse item sets?

I found that this site is the best one for viewing GW2 armor....

http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/

[mariamadi]

thx for guild war2 post

[Black Rider]

I found that this site is the best one for viewing GW2 armor....

http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/

Thank you!
It seems we'll get new info about next update soon
Check back on June 20 for more details!
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/

[Lane]

I have a question about gearing for builds. I saw something that said you should try to gear according to your traits and was wondering if that's the general rule of thumb for everyone? It's easy when it's something like berserker gear, but what if your traits are precision/condition damage/toughness, for example? Is gearing for those 3 stats alone recommended if that's how your trait bonuses are focused?

[Deleted]

I have a question about gearing for builds. I saw something that said you should try to gear according to your traits and was wondering if that's the general rule of thumb for everyone? It's easy when it's something like berserker gear, but what if your traits are precision/condition damage/toughness, for example? Is gearing for those 3 stats alone recommended if that's how your trait bonuses are focused?

I personally first decide what I want to do. With necromancer it was decision of "Do I want to play with conditions or power?" -> I selected the power. Next I need to select "Do I want to be power+crit or power bunker?" -> I selected power bunker since I do WvW. That will we power, toughness and vitality.

Then I start to look weapons that go with it (aka weapons that do direct damage and don't focus on conditions). For necro that either dagger or axe, scepter would be condition weapon. Dagger fits for for bunker necro since I will be on melee range. If I would go berserker I would take axe for vulnerability stacking and medium range. As offhand weapon I take focus, since it gives enemy boon removal, a bit of AoE, regeneration and chill. So it is ok in WvW. For secondary weapon I took staff for full range + AoE. After selecting weapon I started to look utility skills, wells go well with power and add AoE. so I took those. If I would go full berserker I would focus more vulnerability skills.

Finally the traits. I try to find something that fits to weapons and utilities I took. Ofc the trait line bonuses need to also fit to chosen style. I don't want/need any precision or crit damage, since I decided to go to tanky.

Here is the build I have:

From traits I get 150 power, 250 toughness, 300 vitality and 300 healing. 15% condition duration and 25% boon duration are not main focus, but they just come from trait lines.

Weapons:
- Focus skills recharge 20% faster and have increased range (1200).
- Increases area of marks and marks become unblockable.

Wells and siphoning:
- Siphoning health is 50% more effective.
- Siphon health whenever you hit a foe.
- Wells also siphon health every time they pulse. (sometimes I swap this to Dagger Mastery to get 15% faster recharge on daggers skills)
- Wells recharge 20% faster.
- Wells apply protection for 3 seconds when cast.

Other:
- Deal 5% more damage while your health is above 90%.
- Gain 5 seconds of regeneration when your health reaches 90% (30-second cooldown).
- 5% of toughness is given as a bonus to power.
- 5% of power is given as a bonus to healing.

Ingame (some of my ascended items aren't yet optimal, rings have MF, I haven't yet run enough FoTM with necro)


Edit: now this looks more like "how to build bunker necro" than answer to your question. ._. I can not write short reply.

[lanerios]

jup, rightclick the armor

[lanerios]

np I had the same issue lol. Also funny, your avatar I have as a art print in my room lol. (got it when the artist was visiting a festival near here).

[Achaman]

I didn't want to derail the Dragon Bash thread back to discussing armor models, so I'm posting them here. :P Saw these posted on the forums, they're speculated as being the new gem store armor sets.





I think they look ugly, although, the males definitely got the better end of the deal this time. The thread has chat codes, maybe I'll see if they look any better on different races with different dye colors, but I'm not too optimistic. :P

yup pretty ugly

---------- Post added 2013-06-19 at 01:28 PM ----------

I found that this site is the best one for viewing GW2 armor....

http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/

cool site gotta love that golden charr armor

[Meledelion]

I have a question about gearing for builds. I saw something that said you should try to gear according to your traits and was wondering if that's the general rule of thumb for everyone? It's easy when it's something like berserker gear, but what if your traits are precision/condition damage/toughness, for example? Is gearing for those 3 stats alone recommended if that's how your trait bonuses are focused?

What Iryne said comes pretty close.

In short it's simple questions.
What type of damage?
What weapons give that type of damage?
What traits help that type of damage?

But Iryne didn't really answer your real question: how do you decide between condition dmg/x/x gear now?

It depends on your traits as you said yourself. For instance if malice is linked with prec, it's rather useless to go with rampager gear since you already have very high amounts of prec and don't really want more. So it's better to go with rabid/carrion

The "issue" is that there isn't any berserker like condition damage gear. Berserker gear is so good because it combines the three stats you really want and it doesn't give any junk. In comparison if you look at condi/x/x there's always some stat there you don't want. Ideally you'd want condi dmg/condi dur/prec but that ofcourse doesn't exist.

So another generalization is: don't go over 60% crit chance when going for conditions and stack as much precision as you can. Personally I find 50% crit chance enough but 60% really is the limit. If you don't have traits that give you x% of your toughness is converted to condition damage carrion gear can be interesting but usually it comes up short of rabid/ramp because it buffs the part of the damage you're not really focused on (direct) and the runes that vastly increase your damage (undead) also rely on toughness (don't forget maintenance oil either...).

If you want to maximise condition damage first get rabid jewels and then see how high your crit chance is. Depending on if you'll hit the 50-60% mark you can go with rampager or more rabid.

Those are the "benchmarks" you try to hit. If you for instance get some weird trait lay-out that gets boon power/condition damage + boon duration/vitality + faster recharge X/healing power (I don't know if this is even possible). You don't want to gear for vitality/healing power/boon duration at all. You'll desperately want more crit chance so you'll have to use quite a bit of rampager gear.

For "tanks" the same thing applies. Depending on how your class works (good anti conditions, good anti dd, good healing) you'll want to get more toughness/vitality/healing. A guardian for instance looks for a well rounded amount of stats since they have all the condi removal they want and can tank quite a bit of dd (since they have so many blocks). An ele on the other hand mainly has good condi removal but not so much anti dd so you'll want more vitality and so on.


Condition damage is the hardest to gear for atm because of how stacking works. It's very common to be able to get one more stack of bleeding (which does around 130 dps) with a bit of condition duration if you already have a good amount of condition damage on the other hand not all conditions actually need condition duration, I can't even remember the last time I didn't have perma burning so you automatically "waste" some of your stats that way.

There's an algorythm to find out what stat would give you more dps given your present stats but I can't seem to find it...(I never bothered to save it since condition damage blows )

[Lane]

Thanks for the replies. I generally don't have this problem since literally all but one of my characters are in berserker. However, engineer hasn't been as cut and dry.

The Firearms trait line is essentially the same as necromancer's Curses in that it's precision/condition damage. I wanted a turret build and that's all in Inventions, which is toughness/healing. According to the wiki, turret direct damage isn't affected by character stats, but condition damage is, which leads me to believe I should focus on condition damage more than power. Unfortunately, turrets can't crit so precision (as far as I can tell) is only helping my rifle attacks. I'll have to check and see what her crit % is.

I can't seem to find much in the way of "Rabid" gear though. It looks like a prefix that's just on accessories and weapons? I'm thinking Carrion is maybe what I need though since I'm lacking in vitality as a stat and precision is going to be of limited usefulness to me, although, I suppose having more power is always useful as well.

[Meledelion]

Rabid gear can be attained from Karma, CM, TA, HotW, Arah. They simply can't be crafted.

I'm not that experienced with engineers but it looks like you're not building that well. Rifle is more of a direct damage weapon than condition damage. There is no way to keep up even the most elementary of conditions (bleeding). So if you're looking to put some more power in your build you can go with Rampager accesories to sort of make up for it. I'd simply use pistol/x instead of rifle though since ramp is a poor choice.
Remember that there are talents/sigils that do help get more condition damage through crits. Incendiary Powder, Sharpshooter, Sigil of Earth,... So precision isn't really wasted.

Quick stat break down(ignoring runes/maintenance oil using this build I just threw together):
Armor: Rabid + (exotic)Jewels: Rabid = 1046 attack 42% crit chance 2.9k armor 15k hp 1031 condi dmg
Armor: Rabid + (exotic)Jewels: Ramp = 1286 attack 46% crit chance 2.6k armor 15k hp 0935 condi dmg
Armor: Rabid + (exotic)Jewels: Carri = 1286 attack 30% crit chance 2.6k armor 18k hp 1031 condi dmg

Armor: Carri + (exotic)Jewels: Rabid = 1270 attack 31% crit chance 2.6k armor 18k hp 1031 condi dmg
Armor: Carri + (exotic)Jewels: Ramp = 1510 attack 36% crit chance 2.4k armor 18k hp 0935 condi dmg
Armor: Carri + (exotic)Jewels: Carri = 1510 attack 20% crit chance 2.4k armor 20k hp 1031 condi dmg

Armor: Ramp + (exotic)Jewels: Rabid = 1270 attack 46% crit chance 2.6k armor 15k hp 0940 condi dmg
Armor: Ramp + (exotic)Jewels: Ramp = 1510 attack 51% crit chance 2.4k armor 15k hp 0844 condi dmg
Armor: Ramp + (exotic)Jewels: Carri = 1510 attack 35% crit chance 2.4k armor 18k hp 0940 condi dmg

For runes we have a couple of options:
1. Undead: Is the option with the most condition damage
2. Nightmare*: The second highest pure damage since you can stack more conditions
3. Orrian*: Helps to keep poison up but greatly suffers from the 4rune bonus being worth nothing
4. Krait*: Helps to keep bleeding up but greatly suffers from the 4rune bonus being worth nothing
5. Afflicted*: Helps keep both bleeding and poison up

* Are only used to get 5/6 + 1/6 of another to get 28more condi dmg since the 6/6 is useless.

The intricacies of condition builds greatly show here. It's hard to determine what's better 10% more condi duration vs 92 condi damage vs 15%more poison/bleed?
I'm inclined to believe that for (turret)engineers condition duration isn't all that great since it's relatively easy to keep poison/burning up (which are usually the tipping points for dur over dmg). This means that we can eliminate Nightmare, Orrian, Krait and have to pick between Undead and Afflicted.

If you've gone with one of the high toughness combos you get 130 more condition damage (or if you went with rabid 145) so now you have to take the stats mentioned before into account. Will you crit enough to guarantee Sharpshooter/Sigil of Earth uptime? Can you get more out of Sharpshooter/Sigil by using condi duration?... (also note that food playes a very important role here)

Carrion wouldn't help you that much in comparison to rabid/(ramp). If you compare the two you get the same amount of condition damage, less extra conditions (burning/bleeding) on carrion but more power (which doesn't help condition damage nor your turrets). Add maintenance oil and you lose even more stats that can't be given anywhere else. Also note that pistols don't hit hard at all. So power doesn't scale that well. Pistols are focused around getting x% of your damage from conditions.
All in all carrion seems like the worst armor choice.
So now you have to decide. (How) Will you combine rabid/ramp?
As you can tell from the list I made if you go with a "middle of the road" style it's better to go with ramp/rabid over rabid/ramp. Personally I don't believe in "middle of the road" styles. They have the issue that your build is focused around one main thing which you try to improve through weapons/utilities/traits but then you're going 50/50 for armor?
(if you have easy access to ascended gear, do note that if you full rabid you will hit the 50% crit chance mark with rabid/rabid)

Depending on play-style you can go with either P/P or P/S, you already have a lot of burning so I doubt you actually gain a lot from P/P but since you're also full def mode you don't gain much from the shield either. I'd rock the P/P though since I like Glue Shot and the "high" damage from Blowtorch.


TL;DR: Go with rabid gear

edit: I just realised I forgot to check Exquisite Coral Jewels vs Exquisite Chrysocola Jewels and that I've gone with empty accesories, but I don't have time to check that stuff now...

[Lane]

I'm not that experienced with engineers but it looks like you're not building that well. Rifle is more of a direct damage weapon than condition damage.

I chose rifle for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, I like the control of it. I use #2 Net Shot a lot against champions and tougher veterans, same with the knockback on #4 Overcharged Shot which can be invaluable at times. Jump Shot, #5, is also pretty amazing and the #1 auto attack pierces without having to trait for it.

Compared to P/P, Glue Shot #5 has 3x the cooldown as rifle's Net Shot, while it is AoE I don't usually have the need of immobilizing/crippling multiple enemies. The range on #4 Blowtorch is kind of terrible (especially compared to pistol #1-3) and I end up not using it very much. Combined with Glue Shot it negates having/using an offhand pistol at all, although, shield isn't any better (actually worse in terms of how often I use the #4 & #5 abilities).

Looks like pistol auto attack adds a bleed, but it lacks rifle's piercing (unless traited). Poison Dart Volley is only really useful on single targets, but maybe that turns into an awesome ability with the pistol piercing trait? I don't know. Static Shot is fantastic, but the semi-long cooldown on a #3 ability was a put off to me.

Quick stat break down(ignoring runes/maintenance oil using this build I just threw together):

That is almost my build, except that I have 30 in Firearms and nothing in Explosives.

Depending on play-style you can go with either P/P or P/S, you already have a lot of burning so I doubt you actually gain a lot from P/P but since you're also full def mode you don't gain much from the shield either. I'd rock the P/P though since I like Glue Shot and the "high" damage from Blowtorch.

TL;DR: Go with rabid gear

Hm, maybe I'll have to give dual pistols another try. I can at least keep a pair on hand to swap to in certain situations. I wonder if Static Shot also pierces with Coated Bullets (Firearms XII)?

Thanks for the detailed write-up, btw.

[Deleted]

The Firearms trait line is essentially the same as necromancer's Curses in that it's precision/condition damage. I wanted a turret build and that's all in Inventions, which is toughness/healing. According to the wiki, turret direct damage isn't affected by character stats, but condition damage is, which leads me to believe I should focus on condition damage more than power. Unfortunately, turrets can't crit so precision (as far as I can tell) is only helping my rifle attacks. I'll have to check and see what her crit % is.

Looks like both Necromancer and Engineer have indeed very similar trait lines that give precision + condition damage. On traits both have bleeding on crit and more damage on target with condition.


Nerco uses that on condition build. Scepter adds bleeding and poison on auto-attack. You can also add Sigil of Earth to add even more bleed on crits. At least for necro full rabid is way to go. After picking Curses trait line condition necro has two ways: fear necromander would take 20 Death Magic and 20 Soul Reaping (when CC:ed fear enemies, when downed fear enemies, add damage to fear and concentrate on fear duration) or life siphoning 30 Blood Magic and 10 Death Magic (siphon on crit, wells siphon health when they pulse, etc)

I don't know will this help your engi. Just wanted to tell how necro uses that trait line since precision and condition don't seem to fit together at first glance.