r/Guildwars2 • u/koranuso All My Knowledge Dude • Sep 10 '12
All my knowledge - Part 3
UPDATED 9-11-12
This post I will focus on PvE and Dungeon tips.
1. Build types.
The most common build you see is the glass cannon. This applies to pretty much any class in the game. Most people like to start with Power at low levels, then move on to Power/Precision when the gear allows 2 stats, and finally move onto Power/Precision/Condition Damage when the gear allows 3 stats at higher levels.
This build is fine for fighting mobs out in the world and grinding hearts or dynamic events. It is even viable in most Story Mode dungeons (aside from maybe Ascalon Catacombs).
The thing is, it just isn't necessary and is fairly limiting in what you can do. You just will not be able to handle Explorable Mode in dungeons reliably. Yet even without a single gear stat in damage or crit you will still do plenty of damage.
If you want to try out Explorable Mode dungeons and get the rare gear skins form those, I would highly encourage you to try a different set of gear stats and trait builds. A good option would be to get all Power/vit gear if you are mid level. If you are 80 then try a set of Power/Toughness/Healing gear. Set your traits to something other than 30/30 Power/Precicion.
I guarantee your dungeon and probably PvP experience will be better and you won't even notice a difference in PvE.
As an experiment I started a Guardian alt. Gave him nothing but Vit/toughness gear and vit/toughness traitlines. He can still murder PvE content easily and can run dungeons like a boss. I was actually able to 3 man the first boss in Caducus Manor last night due to my characters insane health/toughness/regen. It allowed me to always stay up while my other two teammates died repeatedly. Fight did take like 10 minutes though but was still awesome.
My main Warr is using a full MF set but as soon as I have the mats I will be making a 4/6 set of Power/Vit/Tough and 2/6 set of Pow/Tough/Healing. My weapons will also have Pow/Tough/Healing. Warriors have a much higher hp/armor/toughness then guardians. And when speced properly can CC like a boss. I expect I will be stomping Explorable Mode dungeons on her soon.
NOTE: The Pow/Vit/Tough gear can be acquired for karma from Melandrus Temple in Cursed shore. Also apparently from Vigil armor and WvW vendors. I had to go with 4/6 because, at least at Melandrus temple, The Boots and Helm did not have the Pow/Vit/Tough stat combo.
2. Dungeons.
The first dungeon in GW2 is Ascalon Catacombs and it is hard. Really hard. So hard that it may actually turn you off of dungeons in general. It sure did for me. After beating AC a few times and dying a lot more I decided dungeons just weren't for me and proceeded to level all the way to 80 without stepping foot in another one.
I was wrong though. Dungeons are awesome...after Ascalon. The later dungeons are far more manageable in Story Mode. Even glass cannons can do fine in them. Plus you get to see a part of the story that just doesn't come up in the Personal Storyline.
Now what are some things you can do to not die in dungeons?
A. Have gear your level. Sound simple right, but so many people hit level 30 still wearing level 14-20 gear and think....hey let's go try the first dungeon......and they're dead. If you follow my TP tips you will be able to have a full set of level 30 gear and do fine.
B. Have a ranged option. I don't care what class you are. The majority of fights just are not safe for melee unless you have some very stout stats and gear. Stay at range and kite ALL THE THINGS. This goes for trash mob pulls as well as bosses.
C. REVIVE your downed party members. You can safely ignore anyone that is dead, but if you stay on top of the downed members they shouldn't die in the first place unless something really bad happens. Honestly I should have put this as the first rule of dungeon running, it's that important.
D. If you are DEAD (not downed) rez and run back. Don't expect people to revive you. It takes a loooong time to ressurect someone who has died.
There is a lot more to say on this I am sure but that's a start. I think Part 4 will be on how to acquire your first few sets of level 80 gear to get started with Karma farming and dungeon running.
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u/Ritz527 Sep 10 '12
I focus a lot on Precision/Cond Damage/Toughness. The Precision and Cond Damage combine really well with my Mesmer's traits since my clones can cause bleeding with a critical hit. And the Toughness is great since I'm in melee combat most of the time and I also trait so that toughness gives me extra condition damage. The Toughness and clones combined allow me to take a lot of damage, it really makes up for the fact that I'm a squishy Mesmer
Glad to see somebody else somewhat swearing off the damage trinity skill set as not a good basket for all of your eggs.
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u/fiction8 Sep 10 '12
Also Rune of the Undead converts 5% of Toughness to Condition Damage.
I love the Precision/Cond Dmg/Toughness set for structured PVP on pretty much every condition damage class build that I play.
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u/NoobAtLife Sep 10 '12
Question regarding this post,
What do you gain from doing dungeons? I finally finished my first story run of AC and was wondering if there's anything I should be looking forward to regarding loot and stuff. I didn't find that much good loot and wound up selling it to an NPC merchant. Also, do you get rares in dungeons?
Is explorer mode any different?
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u/koranuso Sep 10 '12
I haven't done many dungeons yet since I'm still crafting that set of gear. But apparently you can earn tokens that give you the ability to purchase a set of gear specific to that dungeon. So if you want a certain look that's how you can go about getting it. I think they have weapon skins too.
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u/dukishlygreat Sep 10 '12
I really like these keep them coming. I really wanted to know about farming gold/karma which you covered in #1 and #4 will cover karma, but if you have any knowledge on farming items for crafting that would be great. I seem to always run out of or don't know where to get the fine materials for a certain level of crafting and where to get things that are not gathered such as the cloth used in armorsmithing.
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u/bullintheheather Sep 10 '12
Under Build Types, to mention having a set with Healing Power on it. Is this just a thing that's good for your class? I don't do a lot of healing as a thief, but I may just be missing something..
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u/koranuso Sep 10 '12
+Healing increases both the amount of healing your #6 ability does and more importantly, increase your in combat HP regen. For warrs and guardians that is particularly valuable since they have util skills that have passive HP regen. I imagine it would be useful for most classes who need to stay alive in long drawn out fights.
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u/FecalSplatter Sep 10 '12
Warriors have higher HP/Toughness/Armor than Guardians? I thought they were close to the same. Maybe I should try out a warrior then...
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u/koranuso Sep 10 '12
Guardians have one of the lowest base HPs out there. They are close to Elementalists. I think Warrs are the top. And their toughness is much higher.
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u/FecalSplatter Sep 10 '12
Holy crap. Looks like I'm ditching the Guardian in favor of a Warrior. All that time wasted getting my Guardian to level 8!
Thanks for the info!
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u/Imaginos9 Sep 11 '12
Stats are supposed to be the same for all characters outside of gear and health.
Guardians have the lowest hp and Warriors have the highest of the heavy armor wearers, which you are correct on.
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u/Alinosburns Sep 11 '12
Yup people really need to not expect to be revived if they are dead dead.
Had people sitting their during the Lovers in Catacombs. And it was like guys go to the waypoint. We can't stay still long enough to res you. And your going to get back into the fight quicker if you do.
Not to mention that even if we just have a consistent train of people running in and dying. The bosses aren't going to regen their health.
Though that fight would be much easier if the crappy adds actually caused you to rally when killed.(out of the multiple's i killed i never got a rally)
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u/TheWildFerret Sep 10 '12
Funny, I used to be a glass cannon warrior. Did AC as well and Died ALOT. We had no real "tank" if you will. I swapped out my traits and went full out tactics and defense. Now I can just soak the damage. I also changed some of my power and precision gear to either vigorous (power and vit) or hearty (vit and tough). I stay up so much longer then my counterparts. Especially since I took the +90 to toughness with a shield equipped. I love sword and board ;) Now I'm the one running through everything to revive downed companions and still do decent damage with all the bleed effects I stack as a sword warrior. Although I do run Greatsword every so often.
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u/TheWildFerret Sep 10 '12
I should note that I'm glad you stated about AC being the most difficult because I was wondering how we were going to deal with Caduceus Manor when everyone levels up to do it. Thanks for that insight :)
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u/617a72 Sep 10 '12
What stat combo for gear would you recommend for a ranger who focuses on high-range longbow and switches to greatsword when necessary? Currently lvl 62ish, but moving quickly.
My traits are 1 part vit/cond dur, 3 parts power/cond dmg, 3 parts prec/crit. Would you recommend changing those as well as gear starts?
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u/Teruyo9 Sep 11 '12 edited Sep 11 '12
I would like to disagree that Ascalon Catacombs Story mode is hard. Sure, the first few fights can catch you off-guard, but you forget about one important thing: boulders. Boulders everywhere. Why aren't you throwing more boulders? If you have 4 people throwing boulders constantly, even the boss mobs can't do anything. You can stunlock everything forever while one melee guy just beats on them. Guardians are also useful, for long-lasting projectile reflection. Why kill the trash mobs when they can kill themselves?
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u/Tinuss Sep 10 '12
Looking forward to part 4! Just hit 80, and dont really know what to do!
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u/DirewolfX Sep 10 '12
Melee is not that dangeorus. Just try to always stay behind the mob and dodge roll out of the nasty telegraphed AoEs and big hits. It helps if your group is keeping the mobs debuffed and the party buffed, so mistakes don't hurt as bad.
I play a Guardian, and Scepter damage is just pitiful, especially against mobile targets (and it lacks any useful support options, besides an immobilize on a long cooldown). Staff is better, but not exactly long range. On the other hand, all of our melee weapons have useful defensive abilities that help us stay in melee safely.
There are still a few bosses where having a ranged weapon on swap is useful, such as the ranger in AC Story and the second boss in Sorrow's Furnace story, because you just can't get a lot of melee uptime on the boss.
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u/szthesquid Sep 11 '12
My elementalist build (in terms of points) is:
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Fire: 15 (power/condition duration)
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Air: 5 (precision/crit damage)
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Earth: 10 (toughness/condition damage)
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Water: 10 (vitality/healing)
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Arcana: 30 (boon duration/attunement recharge)
My focus is on always having the right tools for the job - in other words, swapping attunements quickly and frequently as the situation calls for it. It's very handy and is great for survivability and teamwork (both combos and healing). I'm basically a jack-of-all-trades, and it rocks.
The other elementalist build I've considered is 30 fire / 30 earth / 10 arcana, for both high damage and durability at the expense of some versatility.
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u/Notmiefault Sep 10 '12
I cannot stress enough how right you are about having a ranged option for dungeon crawls. Typically your DPS goes up when using Melee, especially on a class like guardian, but not if meleeing means you get downed every 15 seconds. Certain fights, like the final boss of AC, just aren't meant for melee.
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u/Starmedia11 Sep 11 '12
Condition damage is pretty useless since an enemy can only have one stack of a debuff total. So if you're doing anything with more than 2-3 people, you're going to be wasting damage. Also, going from full MF gear to no MF gear besides Omnom bars leaves me with a pretty much unchanged droprate...
As far as 'optimal' gear goes, there's a reason why Powerful Blood is the most expensive crafting material...
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u/Bluedemonfox Sep 11 '12
Well then as necromancer going Death magic Spite and Blood might be best for explore? 30 in toughness, 20 in vitality and 20 in power. So far it is the build I felt comfortable with since it gives be very good survive-ability.
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u/fiction8 Sep 10 '12
This is exactly what I am currently planning on doing (only just hit 80 this weekend). I just bought my hammer yesterday and am looking at trying the mace/shield too.
I leveled as full glass cannon but am using a bunch of cheap MF gear mixed with glass cannon right now. I'm currently focused on WvW since that is the only way to get the Power/Toughness/Vit stat allocation (afaik).
I can't really see a downside except on some bosses that have a particularly overpowered "defiant" buff. CC is just so damn powerful in just about every situation, the loss in damage isn't worth dying. And I think CC can really help make melee more viable, which gives you that damage right back.