Guild Wars 2

Ratty.5176:

Yeah I can definitely absorb more damage on my Ele than my Guard. When I need it Protection, Regen, 7s of Invulnerability, 3 blocks and Earth Shield + healing. The Guard can’t chain nearly that much together, though it does have higher base Toughness and Armor. The real advantage the Guard is he can give Aegis to the rest of the group and can have Reflects up more often.

Higher base toughness? What are you talking about? And it’s 10s of invulnerability.

Zenith.7301:

The focus guts all your burst, you lose the aoe cc, and you lose ring of fire/firegrab/earthquake for might stacking and big aoe.

Focus has actually better might stacking than offhand dagger. You have 2 blast finishers, both with 25s cd. You don’t lose cc because launch is often not wanted when you los mobs, you just want kd or daze which, again focus supplies with 25s cd (instead of 45). Only thing you lose with focus is burst but in pve burst loses to steady and stable damage.

I can gear my ele pvt with berk jewels and weapons, and he won’t do the damage of my guardian on the same set, ever.

Also, unlike the guardian, ele sustained is absolutely dreadful. The way they designed the ele hurts him in pve because he’s balanced for pvp by having multiple damage skills on long cooldowns, but in pve autoattack is most classes’ bulk of sustained damage outside skills like 100b/Whirling Wrath. And ele autoattacks not only have no meaningful cleaving outside lightning whip, but even single target ele autoattacks are pitiful damage.

In pvp, where access to burning from dragon’s breath is a boon, is actually a weakness in pve because attacks with split attribute benefits usually have terrible stat scaling. This is partly why the ranger’s kit sucks as well — abilities that combine direct damage and condition application are usually terrible because the direct damage portion scales terrible and has low base, and because conditions are terrible in pve you don’t gear to support them (and the conditions baseline are so weak).

I love playing my ele because he’s fun, but outside explorables with lightning hammer spec, running high level fractals lightning hammer is just being a warrior without the utility and much more risk. In every aspect he’s overshadowed by the guardian for pve purposes.

The problem in this game has always been that the toolkit of the guardian and warrior are so much superior to the toolkits offered by other classes. At least the thief can bring the best single target spike capacity, and shadow refuge/daggerstorm/projectile destruction, but the rest of the classes just don’t bring anything unique to compete that a warrior/guardian don’t do better.

My last fractals runs with ele instead of guardian were much smoother.

The launch is negligible if you preempt it with positioning, much like banishing crap to a wall.

The daze also has a delivery delay, which is awful, and the knockdown is single target whereas earthquake is not only a blast finisher but an aoe knockdown.

I just don’t see where your damage rotation is going when you’re missing out on churning earth and fire grab and flame circle for a substantial aoe sequence that you don’t get with any other weaponset besides the staff.

I just don’t think an ele with dagger air auto spam and focus is going to be desirable over a guardian who can output similar single target damage, MUCH better aoe damage, and better support outside personal survival.

Just look at a tank warrior, for example. They, too, can be raw damage soakers with defensive traits, but that survival is entirely selfish outside shout healing/condi removal.

Zenith.7301:

The daze also has a delivery delay, which is awful, and the knockdown is single target whereas earthquake is not only a blast finisher but an aoe knockdown.

Earthquake is 45 seconds cd, Comet is 25s, both are blast finishers. (any idea why four-five-s is censored?). Daze in pve equals to knockdown or stun

I just don’t see where your damage rotation is going when you’re missing out on churning earth and fire grab and flame circle for a substantial aoe sequence that you don’t get with any other weaponset besides the staff.

Churning earth damage is horrible for its recharge, same as firegrab.

I just don’t think an ele with dagger air auto spam and focus is going to be desirable over a guardian who can output similar single target damage, MUCH better aoe damage, and better support outside personal survival.

Okay, now you’ve made my day. Guardian much better aoe damage? gg…

What do you guys think of 10/25/0/10/25 for a dps guard? Can use consecrations or save yourselves + absolute resolution for condi removal, so no need for pure of voice or soldier runes.

It’s personal preference really. I like both of them, some people prefer the 0/30/0/30/10 bar, some people prefer 10/25/0/10/25. I think the 10/25… deals more damage if played right, but you’ll need to run soldiers when you need heavy condi removal (and thus swap armor sets depending on situations) whereas with the 0/30 bar you can just run Pure of Voice and stick to one armor set.

rodadams.5963:

However, I never understood the point of spending 10-15 minutes waiting for the “perfect” group, which can complete it in 3-5 minutes less than your typical group.

I wait for a perfect group when I want to run it for an hour or more, at which point every min u save per run end up being extra runs per hour.

I say only one thing about CoF path 1. Nerf. It. To. The. Ground.
AC was changed, said, due to people exploiting it; not changing CoF (Overexploitation at his max essence) is rather hypocrite now.

AcidicVision.5498:

There was supposed to be a huge dungeon overhaul that began with AC. Hopefully CoF is next. That dungeon has been rampant with player abuse, exploits and elitist fragmentation since the game launched.

It took FoW and UW in GW five years to get to that point. And even then it wasn’t as difficult to find a non-speed clear, non-specialist group to complete those dungeons as it is for CoF after less than a year.

If it weren’t for the story mode side that people need to complete, I would be in favor of just locking the doors until a redesign is done.

Where exactly is these exploits? There is none so far that i have noticed, and i farm p1 alot.

Zariuss.2357:

Where exactly is these exploits? There is none so far that i have noticed, and i farm p1 alot.

CoF p2 gate skipping for example. Where you just jump over all of the gates and go to Magg at the end, which will pop the assassin event.

We used to be able to do all 3 paths of that dungeon in <25 minutes without leaving the instance as well. But that got fixed… Thanks for the boulder, Anet.

p1 used to be even worse. Two of my guildies currently hold the all time CoF p1 duo record, because you used to be able to just run to the end and kill the end boss. But, you could do that with any dungeon, so…

shimmerless.4560:

I think “20% faster” if anything is an underestimate. Full Zerk is so efficient it’s likely a lot higher. Sadly I don’t have the resources to do any kind of hard testing but I would pretty comfortably bet money on it.

I meant you alone were making the boss die 20% faster (or you alone are boosting the team dps by 20%) not you are doing 20% more damage. If everyone is tank/support build and you’re zerker, you’ll probably be doing even more than 20% though you’re right.

uberkingkong.8041:

Just goes to show that GW2 is nothing but a grindfest. If you don’t play a Mesmer or warrior your doing it wrong. All other professions are useless.

This is sad and one of the reasons why I left GW2 like many many others.

The two other reasons where culling in events and horrible drops making farming almost impossible.

None of these issues have been fixed in 6 months…

Sebyos.4089:

uberkingkong.8041:

Just goes to show that GW2 is nothing but a grindfest. If you don’t play a Mesmer or warrior your doing it wrong. All other professions are useless.

This is sad and one of the reasons why I left GW2 like many many others.

The two other reasons where culling in events and horrible drops making farming almost impossible.

None of these issues have been fixed in 6 months…

I have my beef with Anet and GW2 design, but this isn’t one of them. Mesmers and warriors are kings of CoF but that’s about it. Many other classes excel in different areas, wvw, spvp, other dungeons, pve farming, etc. I don’t notice culling as much, because it mainly use to be wvw.

Horrible drops, I tend to agree on that one.

Syn Sity.5826:

Booler.6598:

I agree with the OP , here’s my 2 cents . To all the ppl who flame me for ridiculous reasons like I put my banner between slavery and the wall, I hope in the morning you use a superior sigil of faster eating on your corn flakes a superior sigil of drying on your teatowel to speed up the drying , you then sprint to work and use a superior sigil of faster writing on your office documents at work , this will save you 2 minutes at the end of the day that let’s you get onto gw2 faster. If you dont do any of this then all the optimization you do in cof is in vein. Cos let’s face it you certainly act like that’s what you do in life.

I really hope you read this, because I truly want you to try and understand something from a different perspective. I don’t put up with people flaming in my runs, I like to keep them light, but serious. You need to understand that all the things cof runners do aren’t just to save 1 minute of their lives. It’s all about maximizing efficiency. Some people who play this game are serious (us) and some are more casual (you). You need to understand that the reasons you play this game are NOT the same as the reasons we do. I know that for me, the most fun I can have is when trying to be as efficient as possible in my runs. If that means there are certain random people I can’t run with, so be it. I can find new random people who are as serious as I am. If you don’t like the way speedrunners play and you don’t understand/agree with their methods of clearing a dungeon you should start forming your own groups or joining non speed-runs. And pinging gear is just an effect of having done a large number of cof runs. If you’d done the amount of runs we have, and played with the kind of people we have, you’d be asking for gear checks too.

No offense intended (read: a lot of offense intended), but this is the mentality that does NOT belong in this game. You’re a blight upon the GW2 community.

This isn’t WoW. This isn’t FFXI. You are easily able to get things done with many setups in roughly the same time. GW2’s dungeons are a joke compared to some of the crap you deal with in other MMOs. Take the extra 2 minutes to explain to a new player what is going on and you’ll have a more enjoyable experience.

Many people do not like speed runners: NOT because of their zerg tactics but because generally people that demand ridiculous requirements are rude, not focused on teamplay, and a detriment to the teams they join or create.

After playing FFXI for 8 years and WoW for 7, I laugh at what people consider to be ‘difficult’ in this game.

Need to loosen the belt and breathe.

Really, hardcore gamers do not belong in GW2: it is a casual game.

For the record, I run full exotic (both PVT karma and berserker) on my ele. If I play glass cannon and have a mesmer, I can easily out damage any zerker.

So you’re saying your berserker ele can outdamage any berserker warrior? Maybe with Lightning Hammer and Fury+Might from other warriors and mesmers.

Also, what you dont get is that good COF1 groups can do 4 runs per omnom bar. Bad groups do 3. That right there is reason enough to insist upon having a good group.

@Kagato

I have to admit, as an old school MMO gamer that same line of logic has crossed my mind more than once. Maybe I’m just getting old, but if you can find time to spout endless drama about farming of all things, you have it pretty darned good.

I’m happy for them that they don’t have to deal with real design problems, you know, in between bouts of rolling my eyes.

Kagato.5390:

For the record, I run full exotic (both PVT karma and berserker) on my ele. If I play glass cannon and have a mesmer, I can easily out damage any zerker.

So you AND a mesmer out damage yourself? Wow whoda thunkit?