Which Stat Sets Are Good For Which Builds?

The IdeaFirst of all, you need an idea. The more crazy it is, the better. In my case, mostly shower-thoughts grant the best results or playing old games on my consoles. Looking arround my retro-game collection ... Zelda ^^. Let's say I want to make a character which plays and looks like our good old friend Link from the Zelda game series. We have an elvish character, male, with a green suit, a shield and a shiny sword. Melee fighter, able to use bow and magic.

The raceThe elvish approach can be done with Sylvari and Human. I have made a coupld of light- and dark-elf cosplays in the past. Both work. In terms of creativity, asura is a cool alternative though. Depending on your sense of humor and which Zelda games you want to take as reference of the character.

The classMain weapon sword + shield = Revenant, Mesmer, Guardian, WarriorAlternative weapon bow = Revenant (either shield or bow), Guardian, WarriorAlternative attribute magic = Guardian

Result: Guardian/Dragonhunter

The traitsNow that we know we want to play a Dragonhunter, we know one traitline for sure. Dragonhunter.How about some traits which support our weapons?Bow is in Dragonhunter line, we select those traits as last. The elites are in most cases overpowered and should be (imho) used to finish a character build. To balance out weakpoints or overpower strengths depending on the spin the character receives from the other traitlines.Onehanded Sword - Right-Hand Strength in Radiance.Shield - Stalwart Defender in Valor.

Knowing that we play sword+shield and longbow, which are all direct damage weapons. We could already make decisions about the stats. But we need to finish the traitlines first. In addition we can already look out for some utility skill type we may want to improve. For survival and open-world builds I always focus on the healing-skill first. Guardian has a few very smart ones, like the littany of wrath. But as this is a crazy idea, I want to try out signets once again. Signet heal is over 8000 HP, which is pretty much, considering the low base HP of the Guardian. And as the radiance traits first minor grants us a good chance for light-aura/retalitaion, Retribution looks interesting.

Radiance: Right-Hand Strength = Retribution = Perfect Inscriptions

Now let us have a look at the Valor traitline. The previously selected Stalwart Defender is the middle trait. By chosing this, we cannot pick the group-buff for toughness and no improvement for blocking. So we can try to improve blocking with other traits, as we use a shield. Or ignore this feature in total. Smiter's Boon improves the healing skill and makes it deal damage. We do not use a focus and Strength of the Fallen is basically another attemtp to get rid of conditions. I personally prefer Smiter's Boon, because I used it in serveral builds and it worked excellent. The last one is a bit tricky. We can improve the blocking ability once again. Or we can abandon it again. Monk's Focus has a synergetic effect with Smiter's Boon, so it would be not a perfect choice to take anything else. On the other hand, we want an open-world build with hopefully weird stats, so we should pick Retributive Armor which allows and forces us to skill on thoughness, in order to improve our damage ^^.

Valor: Smiter's Boon = Stalwart Defender = Retributive Armor

Now we head back to the previously chosen Dragon Hunter traitline and recap what we have chosen in the other lines. We could use a source of retaliation. We use inscriptions, swords, sheilds. And we benefit from increased toughness. In addition, anything that improves blocking might be welcome. And we use the Longbow ofcourse. With the Dragonhunter, we get access to the traps, which I would use for the "magic" Link uses against his foes. Thinking about the SNES version, we have the medallions which call upon the elements and create massive area-spells. So we should consider using traps. Piercing Light looks promising. Hunter's Determination looks good as well. The alternatives are not much interesting, they do not boost any of our previous decisions. Now we have to decide, crit-power or direct damage increase. When I played the old Zelda games, I used the shield to block tons of attacks. If it was not for that shield, I would not have made it through the tutorial ever ... so I will stick with the blocking ability, which will result in a ferocity boost when blocking attacks - Hunter's Fortification.

Dragonhunter: Peircing Light = Hunter's Determination = Hunter's Fortification

Skillselection: Signet of Resolve (Heal) + Procession of Blades + Signet of Judgement + Light's Judgement + Dragon's Maw

Now we have the traits. We know that we focus on direct damage, and we can easily skill on toughness to get a good boost for ferocity. Guardians HP pool is a little low, as I mentioned above. So I usually use the trinkets/backpiece to outbalance major class weakpoints. So for that set, we should have something that gives vitality, a lot of vitality. Best way to get into stat selection is setting personal goals. Guardian's base HP is below 12k, our healing skill heals more than 8k. So 15-16k HP would be nice. That is one goal. I also know, that guardians have a very low crit rate. Our traits do not offer any crit rate boosts. As we want to use the ferocity boost, we should get at least to 50% crit chance. I know the dps deities recommend way higher scores, but we are talking non-efficient open world builds. So 50% should be fine. As it is a test-char, I will not waste ascended pieces on it. Exotic rarity should give us acceptable results.

First tryout:Full set of Knight stats (armor+trinkets+backpiece), Sentinel weapons, Superior rune of sanctuary (6). Sigils ... puh Superior Sigil of Frallity + Superior Sigil of Bloodlust.

Four-Stat-Attempt:Full set of Commander stats (armor+trinkets+backpiece), Assassin weapons, Superior rune of sanctuary (6). Sigils ... Superior Sigil of Strength + Superior Sigil of Frallity.

Weird-Stat-Attempt:Helm+Chest+Leggins = Assassin. Trinkets+Backpiece = Minstrel. Weapons = Marauder. Superior Rune of the Chronomancer (4) + Superior Rune of Altruism (2). Superior Sigil of Accuracy + Superior Sigil of Strength.Note: Guardian is one of the few characters in this game, which's healing skills scale excellent with the cursed healing-power stat. Even on the underrated sigil we have 125% increase. Which gets us very close to the 9k instant heal. With our 15k HP pool, it is nearly 2/3 instant heal. One of my favourite life-savers of the old Zelda games were the ridiculous potions, which allowed you to instnantly heal completely in no time. So this insane ability would suit to the concept.