Guild Wars 2

I usally don’t make videos and this might be my first and last attempt, but I want to show people how much fun it was going up to level 80.
It wasn’t for the gold and the rewards have been pretty bad anyways…
All in all I did it for the challenge.

Now there will be a huge balance update involving fractals and everyone will be reseted to level 30 again.
In my personal opinion it is sad because you destroy a lot of people’s hard work and I can understand they are depressed.

After all I still feel it was worth the time.
I reached level 80 and no one is ever able to take that away from me…but
thats not what i care about!

What I have to point out is that on my way up I met so many great personalities
all over the world I got to know through playing fractals and became friends with that it was really worth the time! Thank you guys!!!

And also thx for the read!

Here the promised duo video (I am the recording mesmer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMNCKK8bj3k

We also did a couple of fun videos as a trio and some naked of course,
enjoy and check out the channel if you are interested!

Fractal Riders – Best Fractal Guild EU! love you guys <3

Gj
But i ,personally, have to say its not much impressive since its ranged.

wethospu and sanderinoa´s duo at 48 was way cooler, since they meleed.
why not melee?^^

this mesmer seems to hit naked for the same amount of dmg as sanderinoa melee in his duo video on 48

olli.2478:

this mesmer seems to hit naked for the same amount of dmg as sanderinoa melee in his duo video on 48

You cant even see his damage in the naked video, he’s wearing armor in the duo… stop exaggerating

Ram Banson.4081:

Gj
But i ,personally, have to say its not much impressive since its ranged.

wethospu and sanderinoa´s duo at 48 was way cooler, since they meleed.
why not melee?^^

I approve of this though, totally not biased

Melee’ing seems to be a waste on this boss. Good job this is quite an impressive feat.

To whoever was complaining about them ranging, we’re not watching to see them duo the shaman we’re watching to see them duo the level 84 lava elementals that have a billion health each.

Well i just prefer to play the most efficient way in each scenario i am playing and 80 isn’t a cakewalk as is 48, you have to consider more adds in the spawn phase, higher dps output as well as higher toughness (it’s the first time mobs are scaled to lvl 84 btw) so things get a bit tricky.

Mh-sword is by no means a bad weapon for a mesmer it is actually one of the most powerful. In this case it is just not worth to use it. What you want to do in this encounter is huge dps to kill the elementals in the ,,add phase’’ for this you need the most powerful illusions you can have for AoE dmg. (Phantasmal Warden and Phantasmal Berserker) So basically focus and gs are set. Pistol and offhand sword have only single target dps so they r no viewable option. Offhand sword is the worst to consider because it hasn’t the utility of an evade or reflect while doing it s attack to stay alive and doesn’t even proc the average 6-8 bleeding stacks like pistol or focus do to give some more long time goal dps advantage. So after these things are cleared i gonna point out the three points which come in my mind after thinking about why i shouldn t melee this encounter.

First my greatsword does the most dps ,,if range is greater than 900’’ which implicates that it’s not so useful to be at a melee range of 130. Of course i can switch to my mh-sword but this would cause me to run in front of him or back to 900 after weapon swap otherwise i lose the dps advantage while walking and also the area adventage which gives me more time to react on different scenarios. So if i want to use mh-sword i have to stick to this weapon to stay in melee range for the whole time of the fight and make not optimal choices. I basically lose my gs which i considered one of the best aoe outputs for the only important phase of this boss or i am not allowed to switch weaponsets till the bubble starts which leavs me without the option to spam phantasms which are the main mechanic of the mesmer. If i play mh-sword with two different off hand weapons it would give me the godly focus and the crappy offhand sword illusion. So the best choise is actually to take another ranged weapon for the main hand. Sadly there is only the scepter available which isn t the most optimal weapon you can have, but at least it also offers a block like the offhand-sword and can attack from range so that you can pressure the boss while you are moving (kiting).

Secondly I saw in the 48 video I had to watch since two people referred to it, Sanderinoa is staying a lot of time afk doing nothing because he has to dodge away from the boss and can t pressure him melee due to the attacks which are triggerd by the shaman if you want to beat him in melee range. He has to wait till the shaman is back in front of him and the AoE fields are already despawned so he can go on fighting. In this cases which happen quite a lot since they are fighting him melee 24/7 till the end he’s left just with his phantasms which are mostly on cooldown. So this is also a critical dps disadvantage while you can pressure him all the way from your ranged position.

The tremendous mistake of meleeing this boss came up to my mind while watching the video. The mesmer is basically killing his own game mechanics. He permanently triggers the bosses AoE killing all his own phantasmans and is left behind with his poor mainhand autoattack.

Bart Weird.9671:

The tremendous mistake of meleeing this boss came up to my mind while watching the video. The mesmer is basically killing his own game mechanics. He permanently triggers the bosses AoE killing all his own phantasmans and is left behind with his poor mainhand autoattack.

This actually came to mind for me. Melee’ing as any other class may be more effective but as a mesmer you are forcing attacks from him that will make him constantly kill your phantasms and everyone knows how much damage mesmers do without phantasms.

Well Im not saying its more effective, I can certainly agree that using ranged would be smarter in lots of places, I just think its more fun/harder to do in melee. and come on.. saying 48 grawl is a cakewalk? really? I dont think its fair to say that considering the setups I see you run.

Isn’t using a pistol phantasm ranged?

swiftpaw.6397:

Isn’t using a pistol phantasm ranged?

smart

i am sorry bro but its definitely cake walk at 48

I would say it’s more effective to do it with 5 people. Also if you want to kill him really effectively then roll scale 1!

And sure it’s a cakewalk if you range it. Do you even have to dodge?

Either way the content is already irrelevant so not sure why anyone would care.

Compared to other fights in the game, 48 grawl could be quite horrible for a lot of teams, mostly those without guardians or mesmers, saying that the fight in general is a cakewalk, while trying to prove a point, is in no way backing up anything, its just more boasting.

So, if all we’re going to do is boast and repeat each other, Im not going to continue. Good night.

don’t understand me wrong I really appreciate your work and I liked your innovation on using the phantasmal warden as a shelter…i don’t see this often used by a mesmer.
Also i don’t want to compare me with other people using 55 agony resistance,
you can take any class on level 48 and kite after the bubble . So anyway keep up the good work! :-)

gotta say as being the duo lvl80 guardian that lol for sanders. propably on that video over half of the dmg comes from phantasmal SUMMONS/ gs4 from warrior and whirling trought with 3 so yeeh technicly i give you permission to call it melee but basicly you just kited around the map without using signet of stamina/endurance food or vigor so you could’ve more efficiently gone to melee. i mean sure its fun to make a hard challenge and do it but just out of curiosity did you ever reach 80 and try the shaman there/ or did you both try it on 80 with the “melee” style? and why on earth 48, why not 49/58/68 or 80? your do realise your basicly comparing almost the same difference lvl1 video has to yours than it is to us(elementals are lvl80 at lvl1)-at lvl48 (82lvls) and at 80 theyre (84lvl)—but ofc not to leave any loose ends yeeh the agony is the difference and shaman doesnt scale that much

Great challenge for playing the easy mode profession and not even attempting to enter melee range so he won’t use half of his attacks.

I haven’t watched the video but you probably just hid behind reflects all the time.

Dominus.6320:

did you ever reach 80 and try the shaman there/ or did you both try it on 80 with the “melee” style? and why on earth 48, why not 49/58/68 or 80? your do realise your basicly comparing almost the same difference lvl1 video has to yours than it is to us(elementals are lvl80 at lvl1)-at lvl48 (82lvls) and at 80 theyre (84lvl)—but ofc not to leave any loose ends yeeh the agony is the difference and shaman doesnt scale that much

That’s just crossing a line man… You’re not the only one at 80, I was there before the patch too on my guardian, I know how much of a faceroll the grawl shaman can be there if you run with 2 guards. We didn’t go for lvl 80 because the dictates challenge(which it was done for) stated lvl 48, and as we were trying to be the first, we thought it pointless going lvl 80 instead. Melee/ ranged however, I think both weth and I are usually too stubborn to switch to ranged options, I don’t care how much you claim I’m not doing any work. We aren’t comparing a lvl 1 vs lvl 32, the grubs numbers scale more slowly as higher lvls are reached. We are comparing 48 with a war and mesmer in melee range with a lvl 80 guardian/mesmer at range. And considering the fact that you could take an arow in the face and survive, I’m guessing you werent exactly playing berserkers either.

Complaining that they did reflects is like complaining that you didn’t do a duo of rangers/necro (classes with no meaningful reflects, kitten for dodge, and kitten burst aoe; they are possibly the two worst classes for grawl and naturally the hardest).

You can call it easy all you want but so is playing a warrior of all classes. At least the thief actually has something to risk for his damage output.

When that first necro lupi solo came out I don’t recall the same people kittening that the necro did it with a scepter condition build instead of just daggers.

Yes, whole thing of “you did X, we did Y” is really pointless. Glad that someone got the message.

At least Thief has ways to facetank those Elementals.

This literally the most laughable thread I’ve read today.

I did it better!
No I did!
You didn’t challenge yourself as much as I did, I can’t be impressed!’

Waitwait access to this content doesn’t even exist anymore.

Hey OP- Nice job.
Done. Was that hard?
But but my ego.. Now it’s in shreds! Q_Q

It feels like I was redirected to reddit when I clicked this link

Anyway, GJ on this one. I already miss 70+ after this patch….

X_x it is true, well I am glad to have helped in creating a fun thread on the dungeon forums again, we missed those. It’s time to be the adult in the situation

Gz on the duo, good job. Now let’s all get along and buy icecream together.

swiftpaw.6397:

This literally the most laughable thread I’ve read today.

I did it better!
No I did!
You didn’t challenge yourself as much as I did, I can’t be impressed!’

There was no intention of any of my posts that should have led to this kind of direction.

Wethospu.6437:

I would say it’s more effective to do it with 5 people. Also if you want to kill him really effectively then roll scale 1!

And sure it’s a cakewalk if you range it. Do you even have to dodge?

I can’t really take your posts for serious but it leads people follow the same direction.

All in all the intended topic was

I usally don’t make videos and this might be my first and last attempt, but I want to show people how much fun it was going up to level 80.

So please refer to it!

What you did mates is ultimate GG.
You made THE ACHIEVMENT, and no one can take it from you

You’ve reached the highest point of challenge in this game, and this point has been delete yesterday (Nov 26 patch). With this vid we could remember good old times in fractals, with Fractal Riders [FOTM].

Thank you mates <3

Bart Weird.9671:

Wethospu.6437:

I would say it’s more effective to do it with 5 people. Also if you want to kill him really effectively then roll scale 1!

And sure it’s a cakewalk if you range it. Do you even have to dodge?

I can’t really take your posts for serious but it leads people follow the same direction.

Point was that it’s stupid to argue about efficiency when parameters haven’t been set. If parameters are scale 80 and 2 players then you can talk about efficiency between melee and range. But if parameters are scale 48, 2 players and melee weapons then it’s pointless.

If people think we were stupid to melee it (due to inefficiency) then I say you were stupid to 2 man it.

And one of the biggest reasons why we meleed was that ranging 48 would have been too easy. For the record, I have melee soloed it to 75% on scale 80 couple of times (just can’t do anything with the Elementals).

Yes, it is a nice achievement. But for me, it doesn’t hold that much value since the content is outdated. Especially when we didn’t really have chance to match/beat it.

Let’s not compare the value of achievements gentlemen shall we? I don’t believe anyone here is claiming to be “the better player” so this discussion is pointless.
Maybe if you want to compete then the four of you should agree on a challenge with set parameters. This would be very interesting to watch since you are all very talented players

Actually I would be very happy to organize this is part of the Ascension Project.

Well, I don’t really care about achievements or who is better or what. Just not going to sit back when I’m getting attacked.

Yes my message is targeted at everybody in this thread.

Your two achievements are very different and should not be compared.

Ain’t nobody got time fo that, and I have nothing to prove, but let me say that the icecream I bought is much better than all of yours.

What flavour?

spoj.9672:

What flavour?

Bearbow flavour

Sanderinoa.8065:

Ain’t nobody got time fo that, and I have nothing to prove, but let me say that the icecream I bought is much better than all of yours.

I sincerely hope you did not buy it from the firm I used to work for

Zelyhn.8069:

Sanderinoa.8065:

Ain’t nobody got time fo that, and I have nothing to prove, but let me say that the icecream I bought is much better than all of yours.

I sincerely hope you did not buy it from the firm I used to work for

Bearbows R Us?

I want to clarify a few things since a lot of people may still hold the opinion that the kill is somehow not very impressive because they used ranged weapons.

First of all, meleeing Imbued Shaman himself (even at 80) is fairly easy with a small amount of practice, like most slow-hitting bosses. You have, what, two extra attacks to deal with? One of them is a slow cast AoE that you can literally walk out of, and the other is the spinning attack that also gives plenty of time to react.

If we were talking about a boss with fast melee hits, for example Legendary Archdiviner, I would definitely agree that ranging the boss trivializes the fight versus meleeing it. But on Shaman? Nah. It doesn’t even come close to trivializing it. Shaman’s attacks (including melee) are by far the easiest part of the fight.

To say that it’s not much of an accomplishment because they’re using a ranged weapon and thus negating two slow, incredibly easy to dodge attacks is like saying your guild’s Lupicus solo videos don’t show any skill because by meleeing you’re negating several of his main attacks that only hit ranged players.

Let’s face it – the only dangerous part of Imbued Shaman is the add phase, and meleeing the elementals while chaining reflects has zero risk vs. ranging them, since you are fully protected from their attacks anyway. On the [rT] duo 48 kill video, you basically chain Feedback, Phantasmal Warden and Temporal Curtain and then run out and kite the adds until the reflects come off cooldown.

I’m not criticizing this approach, but rather pointing out that there is nothing about this that shows superiority in skill of playing melee vs. ranged. With the protection of reflection abilities, you could essentially put some random terrible player into a Feedback bubble at level 80 and they’d be able to melee with their eyes closed and come out alive.

The real skill in the 80 duo is coordinating and positioning everything for the amount of time it takes to kill the adds (since they have so much health) while removing the boss’s bubble (full groups sometimes even struggle with this), dealing with the lava that appears beneath you and takes most of your health in one tick, and still dodging Agony/surviving the fourteen level 84 adds (who hit for 75% of your health) when you occasionally have to leave the reflect zones because of lava.

When all is said and done, this is a great duo kill and big respect to you for pulling it off.

ozma.3498:

snip

Shhht … you should be eating ice cream instead of writing this.

Seriously why is there always someone to add “just one last thing” after people in a debate agree to stop arguing ?

Everybody agrees that the kill is impressive! The lvl48 kill was also impressive. There is no need to say one is more impressive than the other. That’s the point: stop claiming skill superiority; anyway comparing these two very different videos will not lead to any conclusions.

Zelyhn.8069:

Seriously why is there always someone to add “just one last thing” after people in a debate agree to stop arguing ?

Everybody agrees that the kill is impressive! The lvl48 kill was also impressive. There is no need to say one is more impressive than the other. That’s the point: stop claiming skill superiority; anyway comparing these two very different videos will not lead to any conclusions.

agree but…this one is waaaaaaaaaaay better than the 48kill

awesome job thumbs up

ozma.3498:

I want to clarify a few things since a lot of people may still hold the opinion that the kill is somehow not very impressive because they used ranged weapons.

First of all, meleeing Imbued Shaman himself (even at 80) is fairly easy with a small amount of practice, like most slow-hitting bosses. You have, what, two extra attacks to deal with? One of them is a slow cast AoE that you can literally walk out of, and the other is the spinning attack that also gives plenty of time to react.

If we were talking about a boss with fast melee hits, for example Legendary Archdiviner, I would definitely agree that ranging the boss trivializes the fight versus meleeing it. But on Shaman? Nah. It doesn’t even come close to trivializing it. Shaman’s attacks (including melee) are by far the easiest part of the fight.

To say that it’s not much of an accomplishment because they’re using a ranged weapon and thus negating two slow, incredibly easy to dodge attacks is like saying your guild’s Lupicus solo videos don’t show any skill because by meleeing you’re negating several of his main attacks that only hit ranged players.

Let’s face it – the only dangerous part of Imbued Shaman is the add phase, and meleeing the elementals while chaining reflects has zero risk vs. ranging them, since you are fully protected from their attacks anyway. On the [rT] duo 48 kill video, you basically chain Feedback, Phantasmal Warden and Temporal Curtain and then run out and kite the adds until the reflects come off cooldown.

I’m not criticizing this approach, but rather pointing out that there is nothing about this that shows superiority in skill of playing melee vs. ranged. With the protection of reflection abilities, you could essentially put some random terrible player into a Feedback bubble at level 80 and they’d be able to melee with their eyes closed and come out alive.

The real skill in the 80 duo is coordinating and positioning everything for the amount of time it takes to kill the adds (since they have so much health) while removing the boss’s bubble (full groups sometimes even struggle with this), dealing with the lava that appears beneath you and takes most of your health in one tick, and still dodging Agony/surviving the fourteen level 84 adds (who hit for 75% of your health) when you occasionally have to leave the reflect zones because of lava.

When all is said and done, this is a great duo kill and big respect to you for pulling it off.

Lol, what an kitten thing to say. Both kills are very impressive and you are directly insulting wethospu and sandy’s kill for no reason, while simultaneously giving all these examples as to why the 80 kill was more difficult just to fuel a fire that had already been put out.

At the end of the day, my lvl80 grawl melee solo on a naked necro is the most impressive thing ever.

Go home kids

ozma.3498:

I want to clarify a few things since a lot of people may still hold the opinion that the kill is somehow not very impressive because they used ranged weapons.

First of all, meleeing Imbued Shaman himself (even at 80) is fairly easy with a small amount of practice, like most slow-hitting bosses. You have, what, two extra attacks to deal with? One of them is a slow cast AoE that you can literally walk out of, and the other is the spinning attack that also gives plenty of time to react.

If we were talking about a boss with fast melee hits, for example Legendary Archdiviner, I would definitely agree that ranging the boss trivializes the fight versus meleeing it. But on Shaman? Nah. It doesn’t even come close to trivializing it. Shaman’s attacks (including melee) are by far the easiest part of the fight.

To say that it’s not much of an accomplishment because they’re using a ranged weapon and thus negating two slow, incredibly easy to dodge attacks is like saying your guild’s Lupicus solo videos don’t show any skill because by meleeing you’re negating several of his main attacks that only hit ranged players.

Let’s face it – the only dangerous part of Imbued Shaman is the add phase, and meleeing the elementals while chaining reflects has zero risk vs. ranging them, since you are fully protected from their attacks anyway. On the [rT] duo 48 kill video, you basically chain Feedback, Phantasmal Warden and Temporal Curtain and then run out and kite the adds until the reflects come off cooldown.

I’m not criticizing this approach, but rather pointing out that there is nothing about this that shows superiority in skill of playing melee vs. ranged. With the protection of reflection abilities, you could essentially put some random terrible player into a Feedback bubble at level 80 and they’d be able to melee with their eyes closed and come out alive.

The real skill in the 80 duo is coordinating and positioning everything for the amount of time it takes to kill the adds (since they have so much health) while removing the boss’s bubble (full groups sometimes even struggle with this), dealing with the lava that appears beneath you and takes most of your health in one tick, and still dodging Agony/surviving the fourteen level 84 adds (who hit for 75% of your health) when you occasionally have to leave the reflect zones because of lava.

When all is said and done, this is a great duo kill and big respect to you for pulling it off.

If meleeing was fairly easy why did they range then?

Also you are missing some major things which makes me believe you really haven’t meleed it. Most importantly when he “spins” you have to react immediately because the attack hits really inconsistently (before circles even appear and outside of them). There might be something I don’t know about this attack so feel free to tell me. One little thing is that you have much less time to avoid his arrow (you have to dodge based on animation instead of dodging when it flies towards you). And finally you have position properly for Firestorm and it’s much easier to take damage from lava.

Yes, we also abused reflections. But there is a big difference between so many anti projectile skills that you can just mindlessly waste them. Also we had to position them bit more carefully because we can’t just keep hitting them at range.

Also I don’t think the lava damage actually scales (not 100% sure but I think I tested it at some point). At least on the video I saw Mesmer getting hit for about 2.5k from an Elemental. That’s about 13% of his health, not 75%.

With the protection of reflection abilities, you could essentially put some random terrible player into a Feedback bubble at level 80 and they’d be able to melee with their eyes closed and come out alive.

According to you with reflects you can just faceroll. So what made this fight so impressive then?

Can’t we all get along? Cookie is the best anyway.

Haviz and I duoed the shaman on scale 77, without reflects.

Zelyhn.8069:

Haviz and I duoed the shaman on scale 77, without reflects.

I can confirm this, haviz refuses to play anything but minions master necro nowadays, its really annoying

I see your memory is fuzzy. Not a good sign at this age! I was on a warrior and that was scale 79.

So, has anyone encountered with the updates anything new that might make this fight more interesting? Not necessarily saying the encounter was bad — I wish more encounters had been like this (sans the ridiculous projectile reflection cheese just happening everywhere).

Maybe with Mossman coming every 30s? (scale 31)

39? Exploding elementals?

Oh yeah that one is funny XD

Syn Sity.5826:

Lol, what an kitten thing to say. Both kills are very impressive and you are directly insulting wethospu and sandy’s kill for no reason, while simultaneously giving all these examples as to why the 80 kill was more difficult just to fuel a fire that had already been put out.

I’m not fueling the fire – I got to this discussion late, and since a lot of people look up to rT and probably trust their opinion without verifying things themselves when it comes to “high end” PvE, I wanted to make a few points as I feel their comments about the video weren’t fair (or even accurate).

I have respect for those guys too and enjoy their videos. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything they say and keep my mouth shut just in case it causes some debate. I think both kills are good accomplishments and I showed the 48 duo to some of my friends when it was first released.

My point was that if you’re chaining reflects and kiting in between, then the only extra difficulty a melee player faces is the slow AoE you can walk out of and the spinning attack, which compared with many bosses in the game isn’t too fast, and is very easy to see since it’s a big boss model hovering above the ground.