Curse

sakura75 · Sep 19, 2006, 12:57 PM // 12:57

INTRODUCTION:

Like many of us who started playing GW in the early days, I started with PvE, but shifted lateron to PvP and GvG. In the beginning (before the era of Balthazar faction points and before the online storage with PvP unlock packet) the only possibility to unlock skills was by doing PvE and many of us made PvE characters of different professions to unlock skills needed to play PvP. In this way the PvE characters we created have a long history of playing and have many, many skills unlocked. There are a few characters that may have a special "bond" and it would be a waste to delete them. For that reason we prepare our PvE character setup to play PvP and buying the right (and sometimes the good looking) armor and weapons for them. Some guildies recently asked me how to prepare their PvE characters most effectively in order to play PvP /GvG and that is the reason of this thread.

So why setting up PvE characters to play PvP/GvG when we have everything else unlocked and can make anything PvP build thinkable?
There are a few advantages with PvE over PvP characters:
- It is possible to change different weapons easily and a PvE character could bring more weapons than a PvP character could.
- It is possible to change different armors easily, depending on the situation and the opponent.
- A PvE character is always ready and do not need much rerolling except for secondary profession. This may change when an update will give us the possibility to save customized builds (may be Nightfall?)
- After having everything unlocked there is not much else to do when there is not enough guildies online for GvG or you wanted to take a break from HoH, PvE is a good alternative of playing. (not quite sure of this is an advantage ^ ^)
- ....

Disadvantages are many, too:
- It usually takes some time to set up a PvE character for PvP.
- It takes a lot of patience and money to get all the skill, armors and weapons needed.
- .....

CHAPTER 1: THE SKILLS
One of the things needed to be able to play PvP/GvG are the skills. In my opinion, in order to be able to play all builds the character must have at least all elite skills of its primary profession captured and some of one of its secondary professions. Non-elite skills can be bought easily.
There are 15 elite skills for the Assassin and Ritualist each. 35 for the Elementalist, Monk, Mesmer and Ranger each. 34 for the Mesmer and 36 for the Warrior.
There is a discussion whether or not all elites are needed, but I strongly believe that your PvE character is not 100% set up for PvP/GvG if you miss elite skills. Usually, you cannot capture elites within a few minutes, whereas non elite skills can be bought easily as stated above.

CHAPTER 2: THE WEAPONS
In order to save money and many of us do not have that many gold to buy the best weapons I recommend using collector weapons. These weapons are cheap to get and the items needed to get it are usually dropped while playing PvE or during capturing elite skills. Remember that some green items are very suitable for PvP/GvG, too, and green items may be dropped by bosses after killing them on elite skill capturing procedures. What weapon to equip and how to make your weapons depends on the build and the team build you are playing.

For casters (i.e. Elementalist, Mesmer, Monk, Necromancer and Ritualist) it is necessary to get a staff of each of their attribute with 20% HCT and 20% HSR (when available, e.g. for fast casting and energy storage there is no staff available). Use on the staff the +5 energy insightful staff head mod. The staff wrap depends on type of caster and their roll.
For example a curse necromancer, migraine mesmer or an earth warder would better take the 20% enchantment staff wrap, whereas the air spiker could take the +5 armor or +30 HP staff wrap.
There is some disagreement on what best wand and focus to equip. Some professions do not require an offhand item, so I hope to get some good reactions and recommendations on this topic. When playing monk I prefer an offhand item to "hide" my energy to be able to withstand the mesmers.

For the Assassin the story is easy. There is only one weapon: the dagger. In general daggers do slashing and piercing damage. Both are physical damage. Some think piercing damage is the best kind of damage possible seeing the fact it *pierces* enemy armor. However, this should not be confused with armor penetration, which actually ignores a portion of the target's armor when calculating damage.
Dagger attack skills must be performed in a certain order: typically, Lead Attack → Off-Hand Attack → Dual Attack to get to most effective damage.
A dagger can be equipped with a magic Dagger Tang (name prefix) and/or Dagger Handle (name suffix) to add extra bonuses to the weapon. Furthermore a dagger may come with a number of non-salvagable weapon modifiers. Depending on your skill bar you need to choose a dagger tang. Most used dagger tangs are: barbed (bleeding), crippling, cruel (deep wound), sundering, poisonous and sometimes silencing (dazed) or sundering. For the dagger handle I recommend +30 HP (of fortitude) over +5 Armor (of defense). So that concludes about 5 to 6 different weapons for the Assassin.

For the Ranger, there are 5 classes of bows:
- Flatbow
- Hornbow (with built in Armor Penetration)
- Longbow
- Recurve bow
- Shortbow
Here is a link for bow classes, with bow attributes like Flight Time, Fire Rate and Range. It will be too long a story to go into the bow details, but mostly 2 classes of bows are used in PvP/GvG: Sundering Longbow of Fortitude and a Vampiric Hornbow of Fortitude/Defense. As a trapper, rangers use a Insightful Staff to get more energy for traps.

The Warrior has the most versatile weapon sets, axe, hammer, sword and shield.
The shield come in two attributes requirements (tactics and strength). Many warriors prefer strength above tactics cause not many warrior builds uses high tactics.
The Axe is a primary weapon that usually causes slashing damage (with very few exceptions that cause piercing damage). An axe can be equipped with a Axe Haft (name prefix) and/or Axe Grip (name suffix) to add extra bonuses to the weapon. Most used Axe hafts are cruel and vampiric.
A Hammer is a two handed weapon. Most hammers cause blunt damage, with the exception of the Colossal Pick causing piercing damage. A Hammer can be equipped with a Hammer Haft (name prefix) and/or Hammer Grip (name suffix) to add extra bonuses to the weapon. Double adrenaline, Furious, sundering mods are good.
A Sword is a right hand weapon that causes slashing damage. Unlike the other warrior weapons, Many sword skills use energy rather than adrenaline. Some sword skills rely on bleeding to do much of their damage, so against enemies who cannot bleed, an axe or hammer may be a better choice, but in PvP/GvG all opponent can bleed.
I don't have enough experience as a sword or hammer Warrior in PvP/GvG to give good recommendations on hammer and sword upgrades and hope for good recommendations from others.

CHAPTER 3: THE ARMORS
Choosing armor is the most difficult task when setting up a PvE character for PvP, cause it will take money and patience and require thoughts about runes and rune type. Needless to say that we must get the best and highest armor class for each profession. Some builds uses armors with low AL (builds that are based on Protection Spirit and Spirit Bond), in this case it is wise you remove some armor pieces or use the starters armor or dragon mask, tengu mask, halloween or chrismas headpieces.
There are 5 pieces of armor for each character, but from now on I will regard the headpiece as a non-armor piece (even though it is still armor).
Before we choose armor, let's analyse the professions first. All professions have one primary attribute and 3 secondary attributes, except for the Warrior and Elementalist who have 4 secondary attributes. So, in order two get attributes level ranging from 0-16, you will need superior on headpieces, but many GvG builds requires no superior runes except for Superior Vigor and Superior Absorption.

Generally:
Based on the 1 main attribute and 3 secondary attributes (with the exception of Warrior and Elementalist) it is possible to cover all the attributes with a 1/2/2/2 sets of armor for all the other professions. One chest piece is needed and 2 pieces of leggings, 2 pieces of gloves and 2 pieces of boots. That's why I call it 1/2/2/2 armor set (sometimes called 1.75 set), cause you have 1.75 set and don't need 2 full sets. The next scheme will show how you can switch armor pieces and get a perfect armor build:
8x Head pieces: 4 with superior runes, 4 with minor runes.
1x Chest: Superior Vigor
2x Gloves: Main minor attribute // minor attribute 1
2x Leggings: Main minor attribute // minor attribute 2
2x Boots: Main minor attribute // minor attribute 3

A clear exemple, let's say you want to make a healing monk with 15 heal, 9 divine, 9 prot and 9 inspiration, it is possible to make it like this:
Headpiece: 11+1+3 healing, Chest: Superior Vigor, Gloves: 8+1 Divine, Legging: 8+1 Prot, Boot: 1 Smiting
Based on this monk you can make an RC prot too with 15 in Prot, 10 dinve and 10 inspiration

For the Warrior:
12 Headpieces: minor axe, minor hammer, minor sword, sup axe, sup hammer, sup sword,
Lieutenant + minor axe, Lieutenant + minor hammer, Lieutenant + minor sword, Lieutenant + sup axe, Lieutenant + sup hammer, Lieutenant + sup sword.
1 set of Gladiator (Superior Vigor, Minor Tactics, Minor Strength, Superior Absorbtion).
1 Stoneskin Gauntlets (for Hammer warriors)

For the Ranger, the story is slightly different
You will need the following:
12 Headpieces, 4 minor, 4 major, 4 superior
1 Chest (Druid): Sup Vigor
3 Gloves (Druid): minor, major, superior
3 Legging (Druid): minor, major, superior
3 Boots (Druid): minor, major, superior
1 Full Sentry set. Chest: Sup Vigor, Gloves: minor Exp, Leggings: minor MS, Boots: minor WS
1 Full Explorer set. Chest: Sup Vigor, Gloves: minor Exp, Leggings: minor MS, Boots: minor WS

For the Mesmer:
8 Headpiece, 4 minor, 4 superior
1.75 Enchanters Set
1.75 Rogue set
1.75 Masquerade set

For the Ritualist:
8 Headpiece, 4 minor, 4 superior
1.75 Halcyon Set
1.75 Harbinger Set

For the Monk:
8 Headpiece, 4 minor, 4 superior
1.75 Ascetic Set
1.75 Judge Set
1.75 Shepherd Set
1 set for 55 HP

For the Assassin:
8 Headpiece, 4 minor, 4 superior
1.75 Shrouded Set
1.75 Valkyrie Set

For the Necromancer:
8 Headpiece, 4 minor, 4 superior
1.75 Scarpattern set ( not necessary with high soul reaping)
1.75 Revenant set
1.75 Bonelace set
1.75 Minion Master set with Bloodstained boots (mostly PvE)

For the Elementalist:
Since the elementalist have 5 attributes instead of 4, the 1/2/2/2 does not cover all here. The best way to archieve this is 1/3/3/3 but there is always one attribute that will be left out, but there is no build know that will need all 5 attributes so when attribute is left out I think it is acceptable.
Standard 1/3/3/3 set will look like this:
1x Chest: Superior Vigor
3x Gloves: Main minor attribute // minor attribute 1 // minor attribute 2
3x Leggings: Main minor attribute // minor attribute 2 // minor attribute 3
3x Boots: Main minor attribute // minor attribute 3 // minor attribute 4

10 Headpiece, 5 minor, 5 superior
1/3/3/3 Archmage set
1/3/3/3 Battlemage set

Please note: this thread is used to set up your PvE character as quickly as possible for PvP/GvG with a view to be most cost-effective and place-reducing thought. If money were not the problem you could buy all full sets regardless of the 1/2/2/2 or 1/3/3/3 sets. But space will be a problem with full sets.

Conclusion: need need more inventory space ^ ^

Stixxx · Sep 19, 2006, 01:23 PM // 13:23

Euhm very nice, but wrong section!

cataphract · Sep 19, 2006, 01:25 PM // 13:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by sakura75

For casters (i.e. Elementalist, Mesmer, Monk, Necromancer and Ritualist) it is necessary to get a staff of each of their attribute with 20% HCT and 20% HSR (when available, e.g. for fast casting and energy storage there is no staff available). Use on the staff the +5 energy insightful staff head mod. The staff wrap depends on type of caster and their roll.
For example a curse necromancer, migraine mesmer or an earth warder would better take the 20% enchantment staff wrap, whereas the air spiker could take the +5 armor or +30 HP staff wrap.
There is some disagreement on what best wand and focus to equip. Some professions do not require an offhand item, so I hope to get some good reactions and recommendations on this topic. When playing monk I prefer an offhand item to "hide" my energy to be able to withstand the mesmers.

Spiking casters should never ever have a 20% HCT mod weapon/offhand equipped. HCT ruins the spike.
IMHO, the best wapon set for a spiking caster is +energy, 20% HSR wand and a +12 energy, +30 health, +1 to xy magic offhand.
As for hiding energy, there are -5 energy weapons and offhands that always come in handy.

Savio · Sep 19, 2006, 05:08 PM // 17:08

I'd move it to the Gladiator's Arena, but I'm fairly sure JR- would like to look it over first. A few things could stand to be rewritten. Closed.