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Total Biscuit beta review

PvP - Beta 3

Spirit weapons

 Sword of Justice summons an arcane blade to defend the Guardian and attack his enemies. Sword of Justice has a 30-second cooldown and a 30-second uptime, provided you don’t activate its secondary ability. At the bargain cost of a single skill point, it’s hard to think of a reason not to at least try it. Just like a hand-held melee weapon, Sword of Justice will also hit every enemy who falls inside its swing arc, making it good against groups. The active command ability only enhances this area of effect potential by slamming the sword into the ground where it explodes on contact, damaging nearby enemies. 

Hammer of Wisdom summons an arcane hammer to defend the Guardian and attack his or her enemies. If the Sword is good against groups, the Hammer is incredible against single targets. With only a 20-second uptime and a 45-second cooldown, it won’t be as readily available as Sword of Justice, but the tradeoffs more than make up for it. Just like the Sword, Hammer of Wisdom will hit every enemy in its swing arc. As an added bonus, the Hammer will also knockback every enemy it hits on every swing. This is incredibly disruptive to your enemies. Better still, the active command ability will knock your foe to the ground for three seconds, which is ample time to set up a finisher, prevent an escape or even interrupt an attack you can’t dodge. For the cost of a single skill point, Hammer of Wisdom is a steal.

Bow of Truth summons an arcane bow that removes conditions from the Guardian and his allies. It sounds great in theory but in practice, I have yet to notice it remove a single condition. It very well may, but I’ve certainly never noticed an animation for it. For all I know, a condition could have been removed by the passive ability of Signet of Resolve, the heal I commonly run with. Fortunately, the active command ability of Bow of Truth is hard to miss. It rains down a volley of healing arrows which affects the Guardian and his allies for the duration of the animation. The cooldown on Bow of Truth is 60 seconds, it has a 20-second duration and costs 3 skill points to unlock. 

Shield of the Avenger summons an arcane shield which protects the Guardian, creating a Shield of Absorption that absorbs projectiles and pushes foes back. Just like the Bow of Truth, Shield of the Avenger has a 60-second cooldown with a 20-second uptime. The active command ability of the Shield sends it hurling forward bouncing from enemy to enemy damaging and weakening them in the process. The passive bubble given by the Shield doesn’t really thrill me. Absorbing projectiles is fine, but Wall of Reflection is only on a 40-second cooldown, and it actually reflects projectiles back to their source. It may not offer 360 degrees of protection like Shield of the Avenger, but it also only costs a single skill point as opposed to the 6 skill points that Shield does. The active command ability is where Shield of the Avenger shines, turning a defensive tool into an offensive one. The question you’ll have to ask yourself is if it’s worth the cost or not.

All Spirit Weapons will benefit from the following traits in the Zeal line:

• Eternal Spirit - Master tier. Spirit Weapons are not destroyed when commanded. This is a HUGE trait for any who use Spirit Weapons, allowing you to retain the passive summon even after using the active ability. When you consider that the internal cooldowns on the command abilities of Hammer of Wisdom and Shield of the Avenger are only 15 seconds and their total uptimes are 20 seconds, this trait allows you to use their active commands twice per summon (if you’re fast)!
• Spirit Weapon Mastery - Adept tier. Spirit Weapon cooldowns are reduced by 20%. This reduces the cooldowns of Bow of Truth and Shield of the Avenger to 48 seconds, Hammer of Wisdom to 36 seconds and Sword of Justice to only 24 seconds, essentially giving it a 100% uptime. 
• Wrathful Spirits - Grandmaster tier. Increases Spirit Weapon damage by 10%. Fairly weak for a 30-point trait. Even with the other traits, which boost their uptime and effectiveness, it’s hard to justify. Compare this to Fiery Wrath, which is an Adept tier trait in the same line and boosts ALL your damage against targets who are Burning.

Spirit Weapons also benefit from two additional traits:

• A Fire Inside – Radiance line, master tier. Spirit Weapons cause Burning! Remember Fiery Wrath? Of course you do.
• Improved Spirit Weapon Duration – Virtues line, master tier. What it lacks in naming creativity, it makes up for in brutal effectiveness, giving all of your Spirit Weapons an additional 50% duration! Combine this with Spirit Weapon Mastery, and let the games begin!

Good PvR Guarduian info

http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/vanguard-wolf-sheeps-clothing/#more-11368

Guardian BWE3 ,very fast few thoughts, no proof reading.

If you are alone, you almost certainly shouldn’t activate the middle virtue unless it gets rebalanced to be actually useful. However, all that changes in a group, where activations get much more powerful because they scale directly with the number of allies they affect

As for what Guardians excel at? Staying power. We make those hot moments were your enemy is breathing on the nape of your neck last longer. We serve as a toll gate to a blitzkrieg. We increase our friends performance. Stumbling upon a Guardian in the battlefield is like discovering a leech has crawled inside your pants. You’re going to stop. You’re going to spend a lot of time dealing with us, and you might not survive the ordeal

Our ranged got a huge buff this BWE…we now have viable 1200 range weapons.

Guardian can be a really good support in WvW and they aren’t just buff bots. Some things about WvW Guardians (at least for Staff and Scepter + Shield):

1.      Scepter 1 has really good range. It can also be used for taking out Siege equipment on high ground.

2.      Scepter 2 doesn’t do much damage, but it can also be used for hitting people on ledges, or taking out Siege equipment coupled with Scepter 1.

3.      Scepter 3 = great Immobilize. In WvW and in a decent team, using this on a target usually means that target will die.

4.      Shield 5 = amazingly versatile skill. Can be used to protect building Siege equipment or Resing. Can be used to ensure a target dies (Scepter 3 Immobilize, run in front, then Shield 5 knock them back to your teammates). Can be used to protect your allies by knocking enemies away. It’s also good for protecting your Siege equipment on ledges by knocking the enemies off. I think Shield 5 absorbs Cannon damage as well.

5.      Staff 1 = a really good AoE. The AoE of this basic attack is actually quite huge. The AoE of Greatsword 1 and Hammer 1 can’t compare to the AoE size of Staff 1. Each hit is pretty low damage, but it’s very easy to hit 3-5 people each time. Staff 1 is also pretty good at hitting people running away from you, as it actually has pretty good range. Staff 1 AoE is just surprisingly wide. It might be better to disable auto-target to maximize the AoE though, as it depends on the direction you face. Also, I’ve found Staff 1 a really good counter to Sylvari’s Grasping Vines, as the Staff 1 AoE can kill the Vines a lot faster than the Vine’s duration (Staff 1 actually damages them in AoE, whereas Scepter attacks will be obstructed).

6.      Staff 3 = a Symbol-based Swiftness buff. I’m pretty sure there is no 5 person limit due to it being a Symbol, so it’s extremely powerful in WvW for mass mobility.

7.      Staff 4 has a pretty good AoE Heal. It can help a lot, but the cast time is really long, so you gotta pre-cast it.

8.      Staff 5 has some pretty good utility, but the slow cast time can make it hard to utilize effectively (you gotta pre-position yourself / pre-cast it). It’s quite good for blocking off enemy retreat paths though.

Signet of Mercy – It is severely unbalanced compared to revive abilities on other professions with a 240s cooldown (Lower the cooldown.).

The One-Hand Sword is the best Offensive weapon you could use since it has the biggest damage and crit if traited right. Well done on this one ! If there is any new guardians looking on how to play offensive 1-H Sword/Shield is the way to go and I’d recommend a Staff as a offhand for swiftness.

The Torch Off-hand is a bit too offensive for my taste, probably the best OH for pure offensive build but that 4th skill is lacking something I can’t get my finger on it but its wrong.

More Guardian goodness

Good info from one so his comments here.

While not necessarily always an improvement, switching out soldiers amulet for knights amulet gives the build some interesting changes which seem to improve the build in the majority of situations. Because the mitigation from your base armor is equal, we can ignore it to compare the effective health changes. The mitigation from toughness is equal to 1-(BAR/(BAR+TOUGH) where BAR is your base armor and TOUGH is your toughness stat, and your effective health for this comparison is simply 1+(1-(BAR/(BAR+TOUGH)) times your health.

With the soldiers amulet, we get 1+(1-(2127/(2127+1950) * 17945 = 26528 effective health.

With the knights amulet, we get 1+(1-(2127/(2127+1381) * 20235 = 28201 effective health.

When looking at this, you have to both consider that toughness makes the health you restore though your heals harder to take away, meaning your heals with the soldiers amulet are roughly 8.5% stronger [which is from the difference in the mitigation from the toughness, or (1-(2127/(2127+1950)))-(1-(2127/(2127+1381)))]. What this means is that to make up the 1673 difference in the effective health in favor of the knights amulet, you would have to gain that 1673 health back through healing. It takes 1673/.085 to gain that back, meaning you need to heal/be healed for 19682 health to make that up. This is a tough value to reach, but in long fights does mean the soldiers amulet would be stronger.

Of course, this is all assuming that all the damage you are taking is not condition damage, which totally ignores the toughness and only takes your raw health into account, meaning that if you aren’t able to keep conditions off you effectively (which is not always possible despite it being a strength of this build) the knights amulet becomes a better choice.

The other stat changes are the power change and the critical strike chance change. The net change is a loss of 229 power and a gain of 27.09% crit chance. To examine how these change affect damage output, we will first look at how power affects abilities.

When calculating damage of an ability, the total power of your character is multiplied by a static power coefficient and a static number based on your weapon damage. Most power coefficients are low, usually around .3 and almost always under .5 with channeled abilities being the exception, with lower damaging abilities having lower coefficients and higher ones having higher coefficients. This means that on most of your abilities the most damage you will be losing will be about 115 damage (assuming a .5 coefficient) and on many you will only be losing about 68 damage (assuming a .3 coefficient).

For the crit chance change, we simply multiply the change in crit chance, 27.09% by the critical damage multiplier (in both builds a base of .5 + .35 from talents, equalling a bonus 85% damage). This gives us a 23.03% damage increase over the other build, which should, especially in combination with the sigils of superior blood and earth, which mean additional damage increases from the bonus 27.1% crit chance (.271*.3*325 = 26.42 extra damage/healing on each attack on average from the sigil of superior blood [the 325 damage/healing on proc is fromhttp://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/36865-detailed-effects-of-sigils/%5Dand, assuming the 5s of bleed rounds up to 6 from the runes, 6*(40+300/20)*.6*.271 = 53.66 extra damage on each attack from the sigil of superior earth).

I think that this shows that the knights amulet is better in terms of survivability and damage output in almost all scenarios (with the soldiers amulet being the stronger choice in long sustained fights with little condition damage), although if someone notices a flaw in my math or something I have overlooked, please let me know. I’m running through similar scenarios with my thief build, and would like to know both for myself and for other people who read this/my builds if I’m doing something wrong.

Asura character creation

Another great Guardian post.

http://www.gw2bnc.com/2012/07/guardians-gambit-spvp-condition-removal/

Good guardian advice

Worth a read.

Bleeding obvious

Great post on Bleeds.

New Guild promo video

The Unnamed are recruiting.

A very interesting strat.