What Profession builds do you prefer to play?

[Erulogos.2591]

I mutate metas. Check the meta for the class and elite I want to roll with, then tweak for playstyle and situation. I don't raid, or fractal with any frequency, so survivability is king to me. I think all my toons except maybe my bank alt have Vit on their gear, for example, which doesn't seem to turn up in most metas because having heals flowing is just sort of assumed there. But the meta has value as a baseline, and a place to start making interesting decisions from.

[Alaia Skyhawk.5064]

For me, I use meta builds (often with just a couple of tweaks) on for the professions I'm less familiar with/don't use as much. For my main characters though, the professions I know best, I'm a rabid theory-crafter who likes making unusual builds that will be stupidly good at a particular thing and generally pretty good at everything else (in general PvE that is)

 

One of my fav builds I use in fractals is a DPS/Condi Hybrid Dragonhunter that has a ridiculous burst combo I nicknamed the Tactical Nuke... Because basically if I dropped it on a stack of 3 of more targets it's instant 25 vuln, load of direct damage, and a pyromaniac's dream worth of AoE burnstacks thrown everywhere in up to a 720 radius depending on how the mobs are spread. (I'm an acknowledged MMO Pyro, more fire is good <3) With 5 mobs the full combo applies 65+ AoE burnstacks of just over 1k dmg each for 4 sec duration (without might) over a period of about 6 seconds if you burst it, or you can drop the combo slowly with autos in between other skills to spread things out more.

 

Actually had some guy with Arcdps ask me how I was doing 36k dps with a guardian on groups of mobs in T4 fracs without the help of full buffs (aka full 25 might, alactrity, quickness, spotter, etc, though admittedly I did have the 15% damage boost from the Potion). Truth is I designed the build to be absolutely crazy against multi-mob setups, but against single targets with lots of health in a long sustained fight I do substantially less sustained damage than the meta builds, making it useless for raids. But I figured since those long single-target fights don't come up so much in PvE in general, I'd go with the build that makes the world burn xD

 

No idea if the build actually does maintain that 36k average in multi-target shorter fights. Never bothered to sit and crunch the numbers manually, I won't install Arcdps, and the Raid Training Area doesn't allow you to spawn multiple targets for testing. Closest I got was the training golems in the Fractals lobby, but all I learnt from that was with a perfect fast combo I peak at 48-50 burnstacks on the 5 veteran golems after 3-4 seconds, and that very shortly after that they're dead in a ball of flames.

 

I guess the long and short of it is, using meta builds as a starting guide helps if you don't know a profession very well. But otherwise, make a build you find fun and roll with it without worrying what the numbers are so long as it works for you. I just wanted to make things burn, and so I did :D

 

P.S: If any fellow pyros with guardians want the build, just message me. Always happy to help others in the quest to burn everything that moves in GW2. More fire is good <3

[blambidy.3216]

I make each toon how I want to play it. My thief is a pvp build. However I do some fractals and dungeon with it. My ranger is condi so I basically do pve and metas with it. Etc. I’m trying to finish my warrior soon. But trying to figure out wat to do with it. Maybe raid. Or just craft healing and vitality armor for my ranger to be Druid to raid.

 

All the time I choose build of how I want to play a certain thing in the game.