Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Area Control Guardian (Scepter/Shield/Staff) BWE2 footage - Part 1

The last class I tested during BWE2 was the Guardian.  It also happens to be the class that I think best fits my playstyle as I really feel I can have a significan impact in every sPvP match that I'm in.  All of this footage is from Sunday, so I'm still learning the class.  I make mistakes and there is definitely some fine-tuning that needs to be done on the build.  However, I think it gives a pretty good feel for the area control that a Guardian can bring to it's team.

I'm not going to do an extended write-up for this build at this time.  I'll save that for BWE3 after I've corrected some errors in my play and fine-tuned the build a bit more.



Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Air Elementalist Blind Build (Scepter/Dagger)

Well, it's been a long wait between BWEs.  This time around I spent a lot more time trying out all of the classes.  The class I'm the happiest with is the Guardian.  The reason why is that the Guardian wins matches.  It's been common to hear in other games that "1v1 doesn't matter." I've always scoffed at that because I know from experience that 1v1 does matter when it comes to winning matches in those other games.  Guild Wars 2 is different.

It took me awhile to realize it, but when someone says that 1v1 doesn't matter in GW2... they are right.  What matters the most is kiting, movement, area control, and survivability.

Now the movie I'm putting up here is a 1v1 build.  The reason this is going up before a Guardian movie is just because it was easier to make.  This is a gimmick build all the way.  The build has 4 blinds on relatively short cooldowns.  It also has very good Vigor generation which allows for more frequent dodges.  I've killed the practice NPCs many times with this build without losing health and without having to use my heal.

PvP, of course, is different.  There were some builds that gave me difficulty.  Most notably the backstab thief build that utilizes roots.  You can't dodge out of root.  Most opposing builds lost though.  For example, blinds really hurt warriors since it eats their "big" moves which generally have long cooldowns.  It was typical for a warrior to blow his cooldowns on my blinds and then have to start kiting hoping his cooldows would come back up only to have them all eaten by blinds again.

You'll notice that I don't switch attunements in this movie.  That's mostly because it was not necessary for these fights.  If you switch out of air you will lose at least two blinds, which can be very counter-productive.  Blinds are more effective than heals since damage is more effective than heals.  Earth is decent since the knockdown and armor are helpful but you still lose two blinds that are on short cooldowns and switching attunements locks you out of Air.  If the attunement cooldown was shorter it would be worth it, but generally it's best to just stay in Air.