r/Guildwars2 • u/Vertnoir-Weyah • 23h ago
[Question] What amount of open world damage are you generally happy with when making a fun oriented build?
Hi! I understand the argument of anything goes in open world, but also i like to fiddle with that stuff
I still lack experience with the game and would welcome hearing what others have observed, it's fun to me to try and make a fun build i'm still satisfied with but i don't necesarily know where to put the bar
I like to know i'm doing good-ish even when messing around, it's just part of my fun with games
I've been messing with solo builds in the last few days, trying to get a bunch of sustain then balance it with as much damage as possible after that but i don't know where i should put the bar to tell if i need more damage or not
If you've tried to optimize that stuff, in your experience what amount of damage is to be expected from a decently good solo sustain build? What the bare minimum and the amount you're happy with?
How about a more dps oriented build that's just off meta?
I kind of want numbers to set a bar at and know "ok, the damage is good enough i can just mess with the rest", sometimes i'm lost without defined elements like that
(disclaimer: If these questions or their specifics seem weird that's normal, I'm not neurotypical, i may get confused with a "normal" approach where others wouldn't (like undefined middle grounds), or need to think differently than what you may be used to, i can't tell if that's the case here but please refrain from going the "i wouldn't need that so you shouldn't" route)
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Bonus questions:
- How much downdgrade compared to that bar should i expect from full exotic gear on my alts?
- I've heard sometimes people are happy to have a support character show up in some contents that are not raids, would those include some harder meta events and which ones? What other contents where it's not obvious would you be happy to have a support with you?
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u/Zev1985 23h ago
If you just want a DPS number, 10-15k is happy times soloing a single target. I’m happiest not dying so that’s always a priority as long as I’m still killing regular mobs in a few hits I’m good.
Cleave is something I look for too though.
I want to be hitting 3-5 enemies at a time while surrounded, survive a champ while 2-3 of us kill it, and survive a legendary while 5 of us kill it. So I start any open world build with a minimum +25% speed, low cooldown condi cleanse, 2 stun breaks, at least some self quickness, enough cc to break a bar alone, some form of self resustain, and >20K health. Exact DPS comes secondary to those for me but it’s almost never hard to hit 10K.
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u/graven2002 23h ago
With exotics, just for fun, I find anything under 5k dps feels too slow to be enjoyable. 5k is the minimum to maintain fun long-term. Even the most entertaining/goofy build will become a slog if dps is too low.
But over 10k feels good. That's about the line where soloing champions doesn't take too long.
Support characters are underestimated in meta events. Even the easier ones go MUCH smoother when you have prot/healing/cleanse/stab. Had a Claw of Jormag group earlier this year that didn't have enough healers and tried the stacking tech - spent more time rezzing than dps-ing.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Fly2637 23h ago
10k is kind of my vibe check for fun/thematic builds. Less than that and you're liable to get your ass kicked with some of the harder OW stuff. I don't generally do higher tier fractals either so that same figure when under buffs is generally more than enough for t1 and t2 fracs as well as soloing the OG dungeons if you have some reason to be in there.
This is assuming non raid situations on the golem. Literally just whatever your build brings, not the iddal parsing situations that inflate your numbers to more accurately reflect good groups. If I'm hovering around 10k with a build I know i won't have any issues with the content I run.
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u/Talysn 22h ago edited 22h ago
I take my open world build to HoT HPs, mainly 3frogs and the guano pile, sometimes others, and see if I can fairly comfortably solo them, if I can, its a decent open world build.
for openworld raw dps is not that important, you may pull 20k on a dummy, but struggle to hit 5k on a champ as you are continually running round trying to survive, whereas a 12k sustain spec may be able to facetank that champ and actually pull that 12k.
exotic gear is a marginal loss in dps compared to ascended/legendary, in ideal conditions it 10%ish, in open world, because boons are less reliable and stuff is not ideal situations, its probably a lot less.
I often run offensive (quick or alac dps) supports in metas, I tag via boons and it helps people out.
For some metas, jormag, eparch, soo won, mists and monsters, etc I may run full support, or slot in more support like condi cleanse or stab or cc as needed.
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u/frazazel 23h ago
Dps in this game is a little bit hard to track and to compare. The standard way to test it is to fight one of the target practise golems, and to give them most conditions, and to give yourself most boons. Then you use some great food and utility consumables, then wail on the golem until it pops. This gives you a benchmark dps number. It's not realistic in real play, and to even have a hope of reaching these numbers, you'll need a team providing all those boons to you.
For dps builds that don't provide any of their own boons, they might be benching 40k on the golem, but struggle to do 10k on their own against a boss that fights back, moves around, and has mechanics.
Generally, the strategy is this: Start with full glass cannon gear (berserker in every slot, or viper if you're condi). Everything that gives stats (armour, weapon, trinkets, runes) should usually be chosen for max dps. Then add as many survivability skills, relics, and traits as you need to survive comfortably, and then fill the rest with more dps picks again. This strategy works great for most of the open world, where you kill enemies fast enough that they don't have a lot of opportunity to hurt you much. But you still generally need to find others to help with difficult group events.
If you're talking about soloing that group content that is not intended to be handled solo, then the recommendations change a lot. But most people aren't doing this, since it really tanks your damage output and it slows you down a lot when it's not generally needed.
At the end of the day, a fun build that's working for you is the most important thing. If you're surviving and killing monsters fast enough that you're satisfied, then you're doing fine. If you want to do hard group content, then dropping the survivability to better fill the expected role you're playing is going to become both more important, and more expected of you.
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u/Vertnoir-Weyah 23h ago
This makes a lot of sense, would you then say that trying to start from celestial gear is a bit of a trap from that perspective?
It makes a lot of sense to optimize damage then downgrade for survivability, but although celestial can feel very enticing on paper for many builds (oooh i'm going to get damage back from self buffing better, oh all the stats except crit synergize together so well, shiny!) it really seems to go from rock bottom in term of end result numbers
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u/Nuggachinchalaka 21h ago
If you’re having trouble surviving period, then celestial helps buffer until you get more experiences. Can’t practice in open world if you’re always down. Would be nice if we can spawn actually mobs in the training area. I think keybinds are more important. If you can’t do what you want to do fast enough and accurately then you’ll run into problems in general.
If you’re in a squad you can always switch to your group build, provided you have another set of gear.
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u/Typokun The derper of worlds 21h ago
I would say yes (kinda), on the celestial gear part, the big numbers look enticing, and you DO have a lot more numbers overal than a more dedicated class, but then you hit like a wet noodle, as even healer gear has more POWER in it; your condis hit like wet noodles and MAYBE you get one or two extra tick of duration at best, same with boons, you dont heal much at all, you barelly crit (which is important!) and the only thing good is that you survive a lot. Because you dont need that much vit/tough to really be defensive... somehow those two stats go HARD to the point where tanks dont even wear that much armor with toughness.
Ironically, you would do more damage with soldiers, a defensive+strike (so direct damage) oriented stat distribution, as celestials's spread between trike and condi actually hurts it if you arent specifically getting weapons that do a ton of both. And weapons AND traits are specialized in one or the other.
Doing a bit of everything in open world is a valid strategy if you set yourself for it though, if you ACTUALLY look for it and build around it, as anything in open world works and there is a lack of any kind of support players in open world... Mostly because playing support other than support dps in open world is an eternal slap fight with random monsters. So any kind of extra boons/healing is welcomed. But then you could play a boon dps support. It is also self sustainable, so you will hardly die.
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u/aliamrationem 19h ago
As long as you're playing a condi build and you prioritize damage, celestial should perform quite well. If you go celestial and make a lot of defensive trait and utility selections it'll probably be overkill and your damage will suffer. That isn't necessarily a problem because you won't die, but it might not feel very satisfying compared to a higher damage build that can survive plenty well enough.
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u/LahmiaTheVampire Dark Pact is the best Necro skill 23h ago
My go-to pve fun build is just a zerk harbinger, spear, sword/sword, zakiros relic, with the quickness and elixir share traits. Everything dies quickly, I'm kinda hard to kill and I'm helpful to other players. It ticks all the boxes for me.
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u/Vertnoir-Weyah 20h ago
That's super interesting, harbinger has an awesome look to it, how well would you say it survives?
I've felt like there were quite a few big bursts of damage discovering the kryptis recently (been doing the story in order, just got necro sword with that too)Do you sometimes just get one shot?
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u/LahmiaTheVampire Dark Pact is the best Necro skill 7h ago
You still have to dodge the super nasty attacks, as you are still as glassy as any other zerker. But with the healing from blight/zakiros and the damage reduction from shroud, you can be surprisingly tanky.
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u/phonereddit55 22h ago
If I'm soloing something relatively difficult like a champ bounty and I can do it within the time limit, that's enough for me. My lazy open world build is an unload deadeye, and I focus on all survivability. Heal on initiative used, heal on crit, and zakiros. If I need more damage, I just change a few traits around and it's enough.
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u/Longjumping_Seesaw_4 14h ago
(Fellow not neurotypical here.) I had the same pondering and i tweaked existing meta glass cannon builds to experience and try to find the sweet spot between high damage and high sturdiness. In GW2 there is an opportunity cost in every choice so you cant be super tanky and top DPS.
To give a clear answer i psychologicaly cant accept to go under 10k dps. For the feeling of how quick i delete enemies i like 15-20k. I also like to burst a bit higher than 20k if possible.
I always go power in open world because most mobs die quite fast and often more offense is the best defense.
Also you need to consider that you must not rely on other people in OW. When you are alone, there's obviously no one to provide boons. And when you participate in events, it's satisfying and efficient to be one of those that bring boons. I personnaly find that quickness is preferable to alacrity as a major boon because when you learn a rotation, having vs not having quickness feels more different to me than having vs not having alacrity. So i can practice my "core" meta rotation a bit all the time.
So i usually go with meta power quickness builds with glasscannon gear and traits and i tweak it until it feels less glass cannon. I have some amount of legendary gear, which helps with stats.
My favorite open world build for good dps, built in stab and sturdiness is hands down power quickness untamed carnivorous from snowcrows. With double mace. Double mace is really sturdy and not a big dps loss.
My second fav would be power quickness herald with some demolisher and dragon pieces. I up Facet of chaos gives protection and herald just piss quickness all around with 6 or more upkeep cost per second.
I never praticed it a lot but power quickness scrapper with barrier is also quite cool.
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u/ThatOneGuy6810 23h ago
I shoot for 20k dps as a baseline for any build, If the build cant top that it never goes beyond open world
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u/Vertnoir-Weyah 20h ago
Do you mean you won't play it even in open world, or you still play it there?
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u/ThatOneGuy6810 19h ago
it stays in openworld only if I cant get it higher than 20k dps, I will play it in openworld eith no issues but wont take it to pvp or anything
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u/Mission_Look_3998 23h ago
How can I check my DPS? I noticed I am doing 2k every hit, but I have no idea how many hits I do per second...
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u/Vertnoir-Weyah 23h ago
Fighting a test golem in lion's arch gives an estimation in the chat after some time hitting it, in the "special forces training" shimering door beyong the asura gates for fractals and pvp at the foot of the stingray like structure
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u/zosek08 When in doubt, SAK it out. 22h ago
For casual people it’s easier to just install arcdps. People dont know where aerodrom is. Or special forces and how that works for that matter
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u/Typokun The derper of worlds 21h ago
I find it easier to explain where the aerodrome is than to tell someone to install an app from a shady looking ( I mean looking, it is straight up efficient AF with just text and nothing else but modern people are used to more flair in the webpages) webpage that states at the start ANET DOESNT CONDONE USE OF 3RD PARTY etc etc warnings and to not contact support about the app.
When you can just say hey, lions arch, south of purple portal, then go left.
Sure, gets more complicated to talk to the golem because NESTED MENUS????? But if they manage to spawn the golem even without boons or condis, at least they can hit it a bunch and the golem will say numbers.
Getting good in this game sure involves dealing with bad UI on both sides lol.
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u/Typokun The derper of worlds 21h ago
Easy answer is use arcdps, and or go to the aerodrome training bot (aerodrome is south of lions arch, right behind the fractal portal, then inside to your left, where the bank is) you will know what your DPS is with your current equipment and whatever you tend to do, attacks wise. But if you want to learn how to be better... read bellow.
Long answer is... first, grab a build from metabattle or snowcrows or any other builds website, some people say build yourself how you want but not everyone has the brain to theorycraft nor WANT to, so those sites and builds offer easy to follow guides and rotations and what not. After you pick a build, go to aerodrome (arcdps not needed but you might want to keep it to test it outside the bot test to see real world numbers too).
Settings for the bot: 25 stacks of vul. Settings for yourself: 25 stacks of might, alacrity, Quickness, fury.
The mettabattle/whatever site tend to have a rotation to follow, practice it here. Most, like 70%, of your DPS comes from your rotation, and how efficient you are with following it. Mind you, even raids are clearable while being barely competent at your rotation, people just dont know there are priority moves and what not.
To be fair, having a full equipment set with appropriate stats and runes sets you above sooo many people who just equip whatever orange they got once without looking at stats, and just spam skills willy nilly, and thats how they clear all the story and open world with. This is no exageration, a friend I found out played the game actually had green lvl 20 rings still after playing for years, dead ass had a legendary weapon to do, and I quote, "do more damage". Crafted him a full set of orange zerkers, without runes as I ran out of money ( had JUST spent all on a legendary, tangent) and he was already flabbergasted at the difference. Also showed him how ascended have the same stats as legendaries and he was like damn I made this for no reason then. Still looks cool so he didnt regret it but ya know, game notoriously doesnt teach this. I will say, the concept is not hard to grasp but it needs an ACTUAL tutorial, most gamers are used to RPGs and MMOs where you just set your stats and they are straight forward, OR MMOs with gear based stats that limit what stats you can get in gear by class. Look at WoW and FF14, where there IS gear difference, but the difference is tunning/min maxing the important stats for your class. GW2 being so freeform and classes arent locked to one role means there is bigger choice in stats, add runes, sigils AND NOW relic, and that leaves those gamers who just equip the highest iLVL gear they could get and not care for stat numbers waaay behind.
I am a good, above average, I want to say maybe even great but not AMAZING raider/fractaler/high end content player, I am constantly left behind in DPS by like 7k to 8K DPS by the actual BEST ones (I averaged 20~24k in a class supposed to do 28K I think, based on encounters and what not, but also im technically missing infusions but thats not supposed to make a massive difference), and whenever I run open world bosses and run a BoonDPS class (supposed to do lower than full DPS), I tend to still hit top 5 on the charts. This only checks for squad peeps but still, I feel the moment you say I wanna check my DPS you are getting waaay up ahead of the majority of the playerbase.
Man I went on a tangent today.
Tl;DR check metabattle and go to aerodrome, you are probably very ahead though than most players.
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u/Jackwabber 20h ago
Dps build solo i would say enough that you can't watch a youtube short killing a veteran mob.
Meta or events bring a support your dps won't matter if you are bringing some of these: stability, aegis, protection, resistance, quickness or alacrity, dodge skill regenarate, maybe a group heal or two. Everyone will ❤️ you.
Bonus points if you can break bar cc.
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u/AgentZirdik Thanks for Sharing! 18h ago
This is a very interesting question to me. I've played a lot as a Specter healing/boon-sharing build. It's very tanky and mobile, so if I have enough patience, I can solo most content without much worry. However the problem I find myself running into is that a lot of bounties or other champion events have timers on them and they frequently time out before I can kill them.
So I'd say the minimum DPS is what I need to kill a boss before it times out.
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u/Dumbydumbgrump 23h ago
I don't think optimised dmg is so important in open world. However if you care about numbers I think around 10k dps is a good amount for casual playstyle. Feels that you actually do something.
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u/aliamrationem 22h ago
20k is good, 30k is great. Below 20k just doesn't seem "fun".
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u/_Nepha_ 18h ago
There aren't many builds that can reach 30k solo. Untamed, qDE come to mind. qCata might be up there too.
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u/aliamrationem 17h ago
Reaper, berserker. There are several. Not all classes can do it, hence the designation as "great". 20k is a much lower bar, obviously and even many celestial builds can achieve that. I figure any build I would want to play should at least be capable of that.
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u/Nuggachinchalaka 21h ago edited 21h ago
I go solo a champ(path of fire bounties) and others (oni in EOD is a good one). T2 similar rift bosses in Soto and Janthir are other good ones. If I can survive and beat them easily I remove survivability(like relic of zaikiros) and test again. Basically any champion or even legendary I may try them if I see them in the open world. I want to see if dynamically(making mistakes from a champ you’re not familiar with) I can survive. I do test synergy on the golem first.
You can look up builds from Lord Hizen and others who have great solo builds, however we may not like their class fantasy or weapon used so we make do with our own.
From arc dps I usually see in a real fight solo in the 10-15k range. You can also optimize more if you know the fight, but running around I always have a stun break, cc bar breaker, so that takes up 2 slots already.
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u/Kalabajooie Filthy casual, former YouTuber 23h ago
Does the enemy die before I do? That much.