Introducing the Guild Wars 2 Combat Simulator
We're entering Public Beta!We're excited to introduce the Guild Wars 2 Combat Simulator! This is a community-developed tool for experimenting with PvE builds and rotations in your browser. With support for all nine professions and their core and elite specializations, you can investigate familiar builds or start putting your own ideas together.
This initial release marks the start of the simulator's public beta. Expect to encounter bugs, incomplete interactions, and results that need correcting. Support for a profession doesn't mean every skill, trait, or interaction is perfectly modeled. Community testing will help identify those gaps. If a result looks surprising, investigate it and compare it with in-game behavior before drawing conclusions. Reporting differences you find with a build, rotation, and a supporting log where possible helps make the simulator more useful for everyone.
We highly recommend checking out the 'How to use' option before diving in, as it will hopefully answer many initial questions you might have!
The simulator uses average weapon strength (the midpoint between your weapon's minimum and maximum damage values) and handles modeled random effects in a consistent, repeatable way. This is called deterministic simulation: the same build, rotation, and settings produce the same result every time.
This makes it easier to see how your changes affect damage without lucky or unlucky rolls shifting the numbers between runs. Your in-game attempts will naturally vary, so treat the result as a comparison baseline. If you do want to explore that variation, you can use the RNG distribution option to see how supported random effects can influence damage across repeated simulations.
Start with a build. Make it your own.
Load a build and rotation preset to get started, or configure your own setup from scratch (you can have multiple embedded tabs open at once). Choose your weapons, equipment stats, runes, sigils, relics, consumables, traits, and utility skills, then set the boons and target conditions you want to test.
From there, experiment at your own pace. Try a different trait with the same rotation, compare equipment choices, or explore how your damage changes with different boon settings. Keeping the other settings consistent makes it easier to understand what each change does. You can save your builds locally in your browser and export builds and rotations as files to keep or share.
Please note, the simulator is built around the expectation you will have Quickness at all times and simulations cannot be run without it.
Experiment with your rotation
You don't need to know every trait interaction to get startedBuild a rotation by selecting skills and adding them to an interactive timeline. Adjust the order, insert actions, and use undo and redo while exploring different approaches. The simulator accounts for modeled cast times, cooldowns, weapon swaps, and profession resources when working out when actions can happen.
Already have a rotation you'd like to investigate? Import one from a supported EVTC combat log or dps.report link. Review the import, then use it as a starting point for trying changes to something you've actually played. This gives you a way to explore an opener or skill sequence before spending time practicing it at the golem.
You can then explore damage from individual skills and conditions, inspect hits, and follow how your damage develops throughout the rotation. You can also examine buffs and conditions over time. Looking at the timeline alongside the damage breakdown can help you investigate why a change helped—or why it didn't work as expected.
Gear Optimizer
For those of you familiar with the Discretize Gear Optimizer, this should feel very familiar to you.
The built-in gear optimizer evaluates equipment choices against your selected build and rotation. Choose the stat combinations, runes, sigils, relics, consumables, and infusion stats you want to consider, and then compare the results.
You can preview a result's gear and attributes before applying it, and add requirements such as toughness or duration requirements where needed.
Another tool offered below is Relic comparisons. This let you explore how two relics compare over time and whether one overtakes the other as your rotation progresses. These results depend on the build and rotation you're testing. How many times have you asked "Is Relic of Thorns good here?". This tool helps answer that question!
Help improve the simulator
This initial release marks the start of the simulator's public beta. Expect to encounter bugs, incomplete interactions, and results that need correcting as you explore.
If you find something that looks wrong, an import that doesn't look right, or damage that doesn't match your testing.. please report it on GitHub. Include what you expected, what happened, and how to reproduce it. Exported build and rotation files are particularly helpful, along with a combat log or other supporting evidence.
If you have open questions, you can also join our public Discord server and give us feedback there.
If the simulator doesn't have a preset that you were looking for, you can submit a build and rotation preset for review. Sharing a setup gives other players another starting point and helps broaden the examples available in the simulator.
A special thank you
- SnappyJoe for the original inspiration with the Elementalist Combat Simulator
- Mkchan for his insights and reference material to his combat simulator
- Marcus & the Discretize Gear Optimizer
Thank you to everyone who has contributed logs, testing, bug reports, and profession knowledge up to this point, and an advanced thank you to any of you reading this article for your future contributions as well!