Is there an accepted ratio of power to crit for Guardian fighters?
I am full tactician with 10 in Protector; I do NOT have the Jagged Blades feat. My recovery is high enough that I have some room for power and/or crit gems and I am wondering how I should manage the ratio. I've been slotting azures because that's what I have, but surely there is a better way...
I run pretty high life steal if that matters, maybe 25%? My goal is to maximize damage for moar threat and/or life steal.
Thanks!
Mitty
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Ratio should be "don't care:don't care", unless you hate long soloing times.
I know aggro is partially derived from damage, but I think you can do fine as long as you use all the aggro tools available to you.
My Tactician only has ~9000 power from random sources and doesn't really have a Crit chance worth anything.
I even use the Stronghold set, which puts me at a disadvantage at aggro generation.
Yet, I use every trick in the book to make sure I keep the enemies facing me, and it works.
Will having extra power/Crit help? Yes. But if you start stacking enough Crit/Power, I'd say you might as well try your hand at playing a DPS GF.
Another way to look at it is: it might be easier to keep spamming ET to aggro things (aka: stack Recovery) than it would be to attempt to stack DPS on your GF.
The point....having a 100% uptime on fray is kinda overkill. There is always something else to do besides popping fray. You as a GF, regardless of you build, are more than your fray. Maybe your shield needs to be up. Maybe you're finishing off that last enemy with crushing surge, and so on. 1-2 seconds is not an eternity. When I speed run a dungeon with a strong group it looks like this. Fray, rotation, fray for run speed to next mob, fray and fight. Repeat.
Now the only way I can see anyone having very little power and/or crit is thru poor armor choices. I say this because raid vs ward, you will see that all but useless stat called regeneration. 800-2000 is sufficient. It doesn't work like it once did in mod 5/6. So the incoming healing bonus is all it's really good for. The raid, offensive in its nature style gear, has power crit and defense. So you can pursue that gear, have some power and crit, and then stack silveries. Same result in terms of recovery, but now you ALSO have power and crit. Most importantly, you don't lose defense.
I wasn't bothered with SOMI relic armor, I will not be dragged into restoring these - no way in the world.
Looking forward to new masterworks gear. I'm sure I will drop a lot of recovery for extra crit and power. Since enchants are fueled by power now days, extra power/crit is always nice.
As it was said few times before. At certain gear/skill level Conq is really the only choice. It makes you kill HAMSTER faster (solo) and you still contribute to the run with your dps. Aggro is better, you make better use of Life Steal...
To add to it, as my example shows, going for a high recovery Tact can move things a bit over the line lol.
A proud member of "mythical horde of DPS GFs"
1). Is SW more dps or tank based?
2). Yes. I am panzer!
3). Get ACT if you want to celebrate your epeen.
4). Horniness will not stand between me and what I believe - "MM"
Yes, I am full tactician. I love the feel of it. I’ve followed rjc9000’s amazing guide, and as my gear levels have increased I’ve made a few changes to suit my playstyle and preferences. I had stacked recovery up to around 15,000, and I found it excessive. If I were to write my own guide, it would look something like this:
“Follow rjc9000’s guide, but slow down on recovery once you pass 12,000 or so and feel free to slot in some crit and power.”
Why?
1. When in group content, my cooldowns are hastened by someone (the DC probably? Does a pally help too?). I watch my ITF and ET cooldowns tick down in big chunks rather than smoothly. So all that recovery is pretty much wasted. In those situations, stacking recovery is like stacking defense past 95% effective damage reduction or stacking armor pen past 60% resistance ignored (for PVE). It has no effect on me or the group.
2. The diminishing returns that recovery has on actual cooldown reductions are pretty severe once you pass 10,000, as rjc9000 acknowledges in his guide. I have Fight On slotted, and I put points into Intelligence. Any additional recovery just feels like fractions of a second off of my cooldowns. I don’t notice the difference in practice at 12,000 recovery; I am not waiting for cooldowns to pop on ITF or ET.
3. I can take those offensive sockets, and slot in crit and power to increase my damage. This has a three-fold effect:
a. More threat. I haven’t quantified it, but I know that more threat is better. I find it helps me keep threat on bosses from uber-dps and giants once I have popped Enforced Threat. (Isn’t hard mark supposed to be a taunt also? I have not noticed that working as intended if it is.)
b. More healing. I’m on ps4 so I don’t have a great idea of the size or frequency of the heals I am getting from lifesteal, but I think it’s significant. One of the main premises of rjc9000’s build is that you use lifesteal to help get back up to full health so that you are ready for the next big hit. In my opinion, lifesteal > deflect is the primary distinguishing factor between rjc9000’s build and Quinn’s build. If I can do more damage, my lifesteals get bigger, and the sooner I am ready for the next big hit.
c. Um, damage? I know my dps is fairly insignificant in dungeon runs, but every little bit helps, right? My crit and power are nowhere near a real dps, but I definitely notice it when soloing dailies and such. I can’t blast through like real dps, but I rarely get frustrated with TTK in SOMI. The gorgons in the River District, however …
Basically I am taking points from recovery that are most likely wasted, or at the very least insignificant, and putting them in crit or power to get some use out of them.
Am I missing something? I very much appreciate this discussion.
(Also, does anyone know what a good ratio of Power:Crit would be? )
Inspiring Leader effectively turns your ITF into a EDIT: 36.5% damage bonus, which isn't that big of a difference from the basic R4 ITF. Martial Mastery is outdated and barely provides any AP boosts, Rousing Speech is too small of a bonus, and Crushing Pin/Daunting Challenge are available to all GF types.
In addition, you can effectively stop gearing your Tactician at around ~3300-3500 Ilvl. I currently roll around with R10s in my Tactician gear because I'm only going to shave a millisecond or two off my cooldowns if I go through the effort of making my Tactician setup 4k. Same goes for my HP and lifesteal count: I could max them out, but the investment versus usefulness is very low.
If you're going to try DPSing, you might as well go big and take advantage of the Conqueror GF's top-tier damage output. (You guys have all been witnesses to the butthurt on the GF forums about how good the Conqueror's damage is :P)
EDIT: If you're really planning on committing to a full-time DPS GF, I really don't advise following a guide.
There are a variety of reasons to play a Conqueror GF and a single guide cannot teach you the reason why you wish to play a Conqueror.
(The other reason why I generally dislike guides is the "flowchart" mentality. Most guides teach you "hey, copy me, do as I do and I'll guarantee (x) if you follow my 3 step program!" You don't learn what you need to do and why you need to do it. I note the irony in this statement, but I'd rather people flowchart a guide which has you tank and be useful to your party, than a guide which does nothing for your team)
Edit: so where to start- skGuardian? Any suggestions for how much HP to keep? Do y'all run Valhalla or Orcus set for fbi/msva?
You currently have a solid, dependable buffing setup which is useful for all situations. (And keep your Tactician gear. You may never know when you'll need to become a dedicated tank again, or when you want to for loadouts).
And when you're thinking about swapping, I'll emphasize this again: why do you want to swap to Conqueror?
Do you want to play an all out attacker which has the heroic image of a sword 'n' board? (example: kalephi)
Do you simply want to hold aggro/not have awful solo times? (examples: Silverkelt's GF or Sharpedge's work in progress [tm] GF)
Do you want to add chip damage while performing your tanking duities? (examples: Grimah or BEHEMOTH).
Do you want to play a high-risk high reward style tank, dishing out as much as you can take? (examples: Snoo or Bethel)
Anyways, the list could go on and on, but you get the point: answering that question will help you gear yourself. I know that each of these GFs do this because of the way they play and the way they gear themselves.
Knowing how to gear yourself will determine how much investment you'll need to make in your Conqueror GF.
There's also a thread which asked similar questions about when to swap to Conqueror, you should check it out.
I did read the thread, looks like he went tactician, lol.
I didn't mean to say you "can't" have a Tacitican with not awful solo times. I personally think that if you start adding enough Crit/Power, go the whole mile and make a DPS build.
If you simply want to have a Tactician build with not awful solo time, you can take my build, take out United/Scale Agility/Shield Defense and put in Take Measure or Action Surge/Wrathful Warrior/Jagged Blades.
This is actually what I was planning to swap to on my Tactician build, but given that loadouts are coming, I see no reason to do this, as I can have a dedicated team/support build and a DPS build within the same character.
If you want to heed our advice of a full DPS setup, then I would suggest gearing it similar to a GWF, which will give you your best milage.
If you're trying for a chip damage setup (but you can still tank and solo quickly), then I'd keep the Valhalla.
Going conqueror does not make you automatically a dps build. A pure dps build is far and away removed from a dps hybrid.
With load outs coming, my build shall finally become complete. So here's my build, in terms of gear and companions.
When doing solo content, t2's and basically not needing to be super tanky....I use the helmet with the power per kill by 100. It stacks nicely. Lifesilk spinnerret for the power and recovery combo. Raid dragonflight arms and feet. Relic weapon set, twisted before that. Lostmauth set, 2 rings of dod (power/crit), and gemmed exquisite shirt n pants. The wheel, the lantern and the pally sigil round out artifacts. Azures in all defensive slots. Half radiants and silveries in offensive slots. Negation/feytouched. Legendary Con Artist with 3 dod rings. All radiants in offensive slots and 2 azures defensive plus one lone dark for lifesteal. 3 archons and a siege master. 2k power from mount.
Tanking things like msva and FBI. Swap lostmauth set for Valhalla set. Switch out archons and siege master for energon, rust monster, pig and frozen Galeb duhr. I have a dancing shield, but the con artist isn't coming off and the gold cost wood get irritating. Swap to vivified legs, it's all I have, and I didn't really care for the 145 gear you could get with trade bars. I salvaged those pieces as soon as I had 32% ever frost resistance with only exchanging the legs. 2k recovery from mount.
Conqueror spec human with 15 points into tactician. Maximized STR and CHA. CON is terrible, and it breaks my heart. DEX is better, but CHA trumps DEX by a long shot. This to me is the most pure hybrid in that with a few (free) and easy changes I can go from a dps hybrid to very tanky.
Lastly, I say hybrid because even when maximizing dps I'm still not a dps spec. I like to think in percentages, so it's around 80% dps vs 20% Tankiness. With a few swaps it's around 60/40 in favor of tankiness. A full dps spec requires imo a vorpal and orcus set at a bare minimum. I didn't talk boons because it's too convoluted. In short though, I took everything offensive in nature except for when the option to get a big heal upon damage taken was available.....love those.
Having over 200k HP on a tanky setup is nice to have indeed. Full Valhalla's Set (am I the only one thinking it's fantastic for a tank?) full Radiant's in def slots, azures and brutals to finish off and add some percentage to the Jagged Blades proc.
While tanking I'm using a SH arpen boon (it's an overkill ofc but at least I do not need to stack any Darks in the actual gear).
Chicken, Rust Monster and a Dancing Shield as my main summon. I've loaded the companion with all defensive enchants which gives me 95% DR and good amounts of Recovery and LS.
I'm almost full Conq, took Crushing Pin and United from Tact.
I took Trans Elven for a spin and from my limited testing it seems that it adds a lot to the stamina regen. Before I used the Shield Talent in MSVA when I had to use my shield more often to not be splatted by the Jarl. Now I let it go completely and use Guarder Assault combined with Combat Superiority.
With lodouts coming I will surely drop CON for CHA for the DPS play. I agree with @boromir I'm using a full DPS suit while doing T2's and T1's. I can tank comfortably while still doing good damage.
One question about Energon, it adds 5% of actual HP, is that correct? "free" 10k HP looks quite solid.
Oh and I said I will not be dragged into Relic Armor, well I lied lol. Took a hard look at the stats and made 3 Vivified pieces this weekend. With Deepnight's Brigandine (God that was painful ugh!) combined I took Raid version so I can use those as my main armor.
I made it because I actually thought when it's Vivified it doesn't have to be Voninblood empowered - derp...but it's much easier to maintain after the relic changes.
A proud member of "mythical horde of DPS GFs"
1). Is SW more dps or tank based?
2). Yes. I am panzer!
3). Get ACT if you want to celebrate your epeen.
4). Horniness will not stand between me and what I believe - "MM"
@kemi1984 congrats on getting that high hp armour, it took me only 4 runs by the way I have been thinking I should have restored the raid version of the relic gear instead of the ward one, what a waste of lanolin and ostorian tales ;_;
I'm one of those who will replace CON with CHA too CHA is love CHa is life. CON= HAMSTER
I'll run it for a while and report back in case anyone's curious. I've tanked two msva and one fbi - I do feel a little squishier without all my life steal, but I am learning to be more careful with my shield. Some of that is probably also the AA nerf. My health when standing in the stronghold is about 174,000 - I'd like to inch that up a bit.
I never used to pay attention to my dps in dungeons, so I don't know how much that has improved. I hit around 115,000,000 in the fbi run, and I *think* I used to be around 50-60,000,000. For dailies my damage has easily doubled if not more.
Anyway more input is welcome if anyone happens upon the thread. And thanks again for having the patience to drill some of these concepts into my thick skull
Best,
Mitty
1.3 * 1.05 = 1.365
This must be the reason why I'm not the greatest at calculus...
Could you, @kemi1984 and/or anyone with access to preview server help me out with something? I need to know how much STR and CHA a human can roll maximum to decide between keeping that race or changing to dragonborn or maybe half-orc. I'm out of character slots and don't feel like risking to waste a regular race reroll in case buying the 2k + dragonborn unlock and race reroll turns out to be the way to go
http://janne.coreside.com/mechanics/ability
If you want to max out your STR/Cha, scroll down, click "Guardian Fighter", it shows you the pre-generated rolls for each ability score. If you are comparing the rolls in the race-reroll screen, make sure you're accounting for your race's ability score bonuses...
Speaking of races, the best 3 DPS races are Half Orc, Dragonborn, and Human, all because they give STR.
Dragonborn does give a boost to the much needed Crit field, but you look ugly as sin and that is such a crippling disadvantage that I know a few people refuse to play Dragonborn for that reason alone.
Human is what you'd expect: decent at everything, but a specialist at nothing. I personally can't see the use for the extra 3 feat points on a DPS setup, as you can easily cover the essentials with a non-human race's heroic featpoints.
Half Orc would probably be the best choice. Crit Severity, looks decent enough, and best of all, the boost in run-speed when you enter combat.
It looks like the best dps roll would be (account for racial ability score bonuses) 18 STR 12 CHA which would put me at 25 STR 19 CHA without campfire bonus so including it and the 2 special potions would be 28 STR 22 CHA oh and then belts too! sounds like a good roll to me, not sure if the best but I can't go wrong with it
Than, I saw that it has really bad stats for my setup. When I see Regen I do see a lot of hamsters around...
Only the boots are decent. At that time I was looking at recovery inspired by @rjc9000 guide.
Since It's easy to cap defense + recovery on the pet, IMO Raid version is much, much better.
On, the flip side, one can always use Ward ones, and strip companion from the defense and stack it with power, arpen and crit...
So if you already have Ward, and want to utilize it. Look at your stats with bondings and just tweak it to your liking.
The easiest way is tu go to any dummy and make your comp to attack putting those stack up. Than enter his inventory and swap enchantment around to see how the stats look like
It may be even easier to see using a tool that's posted on a side that shall not be named
A proud member of "mythical horde of DPS GFs"
1). Is SW more dps or tank based?
2). Yes. I am panzer!
3). Get ACT if you want to celebrate your epeen.
4). Horniness will not stand between me and what I believe - "MM"
That tool would be interesting to try for sure!