Guild Wars 2

Fixing bug.

Also don’t use any elites, never swap weapons and be blindfolded please.

So, my example of not having a Guardian or Mesmer or any class that provides useful reflects isn’t valid, because it’s a 5 Warrior group comp? Are you serious? Wow…

So, how about 5 Ranger? It’d be trivially easy in comparison. I don’t even play Ranger, and I am quite aware that they have a very good antiprojectile skill on their offhand axe. Part of me thinks that perhaps every ranger could run offhand axe, and make the hardest part of the fight (the bubble/elemental phase) a complete cakewalk. Especially since rangers can do some OP stuff to slow the Shaman, too. Did I mention that bear pets can take the aggro of the shaman pretty easily, reducing the pressure on the team by an insane amount when not in the bubble phase?

How about 5 Elementalist? It’d be pretty easy, in comparison, too, and you’re crazy if you think that any intelligent player would intentionally disregard something as fantastic as Ice Bow (especially since there isn’t any cheese in this context, since you wouldn’t be doing any line casting… but you probably consider icebow lame because it does damage or somesuch nonsense). In fact, you’d only need to suffer through a single bubble phase on a 5-ele comp, because Chill is pretty OP. I bet Rocky might not be a bad bear stand in, either. Plus if you’re entirely against icebow, how about FGS? Last I checked, the 5 skill and the 2 skill on FGS are both 10-target skills. You could LOS the elementals (for that one phase you actually have to endure) in the same spot we did, drop maybe a Swirling winds, and then blow them all up with trivial ease (you could presumably even whirl against the rock!), or any number of other tactics that’d work pretty well.

5 Necromancers might even be able to do it faster.

maybe…

might have to take some duration food for the immob on bubble phase though. Or maybe clever timing of LIfe siphon and tainted shackles with a well….

Yeah necros arent terrible in that fight either. Blinds work on the adds and you can chill and immob the shaman plenty (dark path unblockable). Also minion arrow baits. Although i would personally stock up on 3 wells for every necro.

Spoj,
Why you gotta be Eu man, I wanna go do Necro stuff with you….

The real question is why are you NA?

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

PVE is just broken blame devs not players because they can`t fix pve for over a year , stacking in corners rules !!!!!!! you should be happy that you are not engi . ranger can take gs , spoter+spirit and has META BUILD necro also but engi is crap when you look at his dps .

Imbued Shaman and cornering…I would really see you do that :P

Spoj The Second.7680:

Yeah necros arent terrible in that fight either. Blinds work on the adds and you can chill and immob the shaman plenty (dark path unblockable). Also minion arrow baits. Although i would personally stock up on 3 wells for every necro.

Darn, you stole my spot light. I was also thinking that 5 necro will get an easy time here with blind, chill and fear (yes, chill then fear). Your ideas of Minion Master is nice, too. The adds hit hard but have low HP. Even 1 condimancer would be viable. Hmmm… hmmm…

5 eles? Please, they will cheese through it. Do they really think that all ele has is icebow? Proof for having not played the class (at all).

5 rangers? Rangers have reflect, too. I’m a tiny bit concerned about the cleave, but I don’t play ranger enough to have any say here. I’ll leave that to deSade.

Ropechef.6192:

Spoj,
Why you gotta be Eu man, I wanna go do Necro stuff with you….

You can always do necro stuff with me In PvP tho.

Necro’s Life Transfer also works to get a lot of hits in on the Shaman’s shield.

Zaxares.5419:

Necro’s Life Transfer also works to get a lot of hits in on the Shaman’s shield.

It only removes 1 stack. Shield stacks are removed 1 per ability. Multi hit attacks dont remove any extra. This is a common mistake many people make.

Really? O.o I’ll need to pay more attention to the shield in future. I could have sworn it took down multiple ticks. So skills like Barrage, Rapid Fire etc. all also only take off one stack?

Yeah. But some non damaging skills remove stacks aswell. For example if you cast guardians shelter heal it removes a stack. Its odd. basically just spam as many fast casting abilities as u can or just auto attack.

Well, that at least explains why the Shaman always seemed to be much easier when I was bringing my MM Necro for Fractals. XD

To be fair, if you play a very high end Fractal like a level 49, you should expect that your team demands a certain level of performance.

If you want to play as you like just go for a lower level Fractal and things should be fine.

I laughed, like, honest-to-chtulhu laughed. at that guy going all “warrs op, not fair, do it with 5 rangers”.
As if it were harder with a class that can reflect.
/shrug
I’m pretty sure it would be easy, if not smooth, provided everyone knows what to do.
Oh, and the 3rd aa of the sword hits in an aoe around you (can hit enemies behind), the gs has a very good range on the attacks. Rangers don’t have the same damage as ellys, but they should be reasonably ok by compensating with axe 5… I wouldn’t worry about the aoe. The only thing that might make it tricky is the rooting on axe 5, but it could be bypassed by good coordination and a combo of healing springs laid down at the right moment.
I don’t see pets being that useful, but I guess a few bears won’t hurt.
Ohhhh, now he’s gonna backpedal saying that he didn’t mean “without guardians and mesmers” or “with 5 rangers” but specifically “5 nomad rangers with under 1k ap, that have never done fractals before, pugs, specced for birdbow but with a shortbow that’s very important”. Just to prove the fight is bad and unbalanced…
… Anyone up for the challenge?
P.S. Entangle.

I guess he will challenge (me) to theorycraft the fight for 5 ele ((giggle giggle))

Zenith.7301:

Optionally, an ele can chill the boss to a crawl while in shield and you assing a quick attacking class to take off the shield while the rest of the group quickly wipes the adds after binding blades.

It’s just a really badly designed fight that mandates the presence of a class with reflects, and especially a guardian because mesmer reflect is a lower duration skill compared to guardians, whose reflect skills can be chained and last longer.

That’s the single fight in the fractals where not having a guardian can royally screw your group over. The rest of the bosses are certainly harder without a guardian, because guardians are broken OP in fractals and pretty much anywhere else, but the presence of a guardian is nowhere near as critical as it is to the fire shaman.

Mostly because they put in a ton of adds that do instnt ranged damage that hits like a truck and immobilizes and the AI targeting system in this game is o horrendous to the point where these mobs can choose to all shoot at a single person and immediately down them.

GW2 is known for its gimmicky PvE, why do you think there is no real progression raider presence in this game. The closest this game got was Death and Taxes.

Every class has access to at least one projectile reflect/absorb (except necromancers, because A.net hates necromancers). Warriors are the only class that don’t have an AoE projectile reflect/absorb (except for necromancers, because A.net does not want people playing necromancers apparently). As long as you keep shunning necromancers, and make sure your party stops being lazy and slots in appropriate utilities and weapons for the fight, you’ll be fine.

Remember, no necros, you’ll be fine.

Iris Ng.9845:

I guess he will challenge (me) to theorycraft the fight for 5 ele with celestial gear, dagger/dagger, under 3k ap((giggle giggle))

FTFY.

deSade.9437:

Iris Ng.9845:

I guess he will challenge (me) to theorycraft the fight for 5 ele with celestial gear, dagger/dagger, under 3k ap((giggle giggle))

FTFY.

Oh my, that sounds like hardmode.

deSade.9437:

I laughed, like, honest-to-chtulhu laughed. at that guy going all “warrs op, not fair, do it with 5 rangers”.

Or 5 eles xD

5 swirling winds and loads of AoEs. Game over.

Lesson of the day: Think before you rage.

Mn-kay, on a Fractal that high it’s pretty reasonable to expect people wanting specific builds because of the difficulty involved. I only do scales 1-9 for that reason. I’m not skilled enough for 40+ and I will never be. For truly over the top content, you do have to expect people wanting the most game-breaking and effective stats and they should advertise in LFG as such to keep others out. You sure don’t ever see me joining a group that says “zerk only” or “no r**ards” or “speed clear” because I know it’s going to be toxic and for a build I can’t manage.

That said – all this elitism is kinda gross. Zerk warriors don’t matter in the reactor fractal if none of them learn how to deal with the disappearing floors and fall to their deaths in the first minute. Hilarious when the condi-thief has to solo the fight because she’s the only one who learned how to navigate. I hate that fractal, I take back my vote – team Gnashblade now.

I wasn’t suggesting Sanctuary so much as stating something historic. Early in the history of Lava shaman, it was taken but of course it isn’t taken these days. I agree that too that I’ve rarely seen guardians, good or otherwise, take it in there. Although I have seen guardians that have taken no refllects.

I’d almost want to try 5 rangers against the shaman. Too bad most of my guild are bound up in the “rangers are terribad” thinking and only a couple of us play one

Use offhand axe, the healing spring and the Spirit of Nature, man.

You reflect all the spit with axe 5, keep the burning in check with the healing spring, and when your allies go down, you bring them back with the spirit.

4 pages of this stuff…yeah I didn’t read much. I finally found a group of people that have a common goal of have fun. I ran a high-level fractal with a squishy crit thief. I went D/D on most bosses and mobs. You wanna know why no one kicked me? I was ressing them and did not down once. When Anet first made GW2 they stressed that you should be able to play how you want. Sure there are ways to focus your build to make things easier, but you still need skill. Make your own freakin build, not some named POS from a forum. Get a feel for how you play and how to make it more effective and become a ninja with that character. I have less than 11k health on my thief and crap for toughness, bring it on.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Use offhand axe, the healing spring and the Spirit of Nature, man.

You reflect all the spit with axe 5, keep the burning in check with the healing spring, and when your allies go down, you bring them back with the spirit.

That axe offhand skills destroys projectiles. It doesn’t reflect them.

But by all means record that 5 ranger video and compare it to a video of 5 guardians or Warriors.

Anything can be done, people are soloing fractals. But the question of efficiency and likelihood of proper execution with a regular random group is an entirely different question.

Keep pretending as if the “lv50 fractal HEAVIES ONLY” daily posts on the LFG tool are some figment out of people’s imagination and people choose to favor heavies for no reason whatsoever.

Zenith.7301:

MithranArkanere.8957:

Use offhand axe, the healing spring and the Spirit of Nature, man.

You reflect all the spit with axe 5, keep the burning in check with the healing spring, and when your allies go down, you bring them back with the spirit.

That axe offhand skills destroys projectiles. It doesn’t reflect them.

Offhand axe for Ranger definitely reflects projectiles. Either that or my game’s bugged every time I press 5.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Whirling_Defense

Zenith.7301:

That axe offhand skills destroys projectiles. It doesn’t reflect them.

It reflects. Go try it.

Zenith.7301:

MithranArkanere.8957:

Use offhand axe, the healing spring and the Spirit of Nature, man.

You reflect all the spit with axe 5, keep the burning in check with the healing spring, and when your allies go down, you bring them back with the spirit.

Keep pretending as if the “lv50 fractal HEAVIES ONLY” daily posts on the LFG tool are some figment out of people’s imagination and people choose to favor heavies for no reason whatsoever being bad.

I already know. That doesn’t mean I’m obliged to join them. And I’m sure most people here feel the same as me.

Iris Ng.9845:

Zenith.7301:

MithranArkanere.8957:

Use offhand axe, the healing spring and the Spirit of Nature, man.

You reflect all the spit with axe 5, keep the burning in check with the healing spring, and when your allies go down, you bring them back with the spirit.

Keep pretending as if the “lv50 fractal HEAVIES ONLY” daily posts on the LFG tool are some figment out of people’s imagination and people choose to favor heavies for no reason whatsoever being bad.

I already know. That doesn’t mean I’m obliged to join them. And I’m sure most people here feel the same as me.

Sure, they’re bad. Clearly rangers and necromancers come on equal footing to warrior/elementalist/thief/guardian.

No, sorry, no. Put the skill you want, a good ranger or necro will never bring to a group what a good elementalist or warrior or guardian does. And they certainly won’t bring the skipping benefits and single target DPS a thief has.

Class synergies are real, and this is why in team synergy heavy formats like GvG in WvW rangers are often not present at all or used largely in niche scenarios whereas guardian, warrior, and elementalists make the backbone of any group.

This game is all about boon stacking and aoe abuse, and rangers are strong on neither. They even had to buff ranger’s warhorn recently. Ranger pets are still broken and you see mostly drakes used for that reason, pets don’t even scale with ascended stats.

Are thieves and eles qualified for “Heavy Only” now? I’m super confused now.

Iris Ng.9845:

Are thieves and eles qualified for “Heavy Only” now? I’m super confused now.

When people are being intentionally obtuse, they get no further replies. Bye.

Zenith.7301:

Iris Ng.9845:

Are thieves and eles qualified for “Heavy Only” now? I’m super confused now.

When people are being intentionally obtuse, they get no further replies. Bye.

I was thinking the same thing as Iris.

In any case, I still think guards and eles are best for fractals, but I’d rather have ranger/engi/thief/necro over a 2nd and especially over a 3rd warrior. 1 war is enough, more than 1 is redundant. All heavy groups are not even close to optimal. Iris is right. You are wrong.

Zenith, you claimed the encounter mandates the presence of a reflect class (implied by you to be mesmer or guard), especially a guard.

This statement was shown to be demonstrably incorrect.

Instead okittennowledging that you were wrong, you pretended that the proof you were wrong just showed you were correct in the first place, while at the same time attempting to move the goalpost for a proof that you were wrong.

People replied, saying that you were shown to be wrong, and should admit it. They also replied saying that your new criteria is actually much easier to meet, with reasons as to why.

You mostly ignore all of that stuff. You come back and state that the ranger axe 5 doesn’t reflect projectiles. You then further try and alter what we’re talking about, further moving the conversation away from whether or not you made a factually incorrect statement regarding the mandated presence of a reflect class or not (…while in that statement, saying that anything is possible…).

People reply, pointing out that you’re factually wrong about ranger axe 5. They also respond to your diversion to ‘heavies only’.

You respond only to the person who talked about ‘heavies only’. Shown to be demonstrably wrong on your statement here, yet again, you decide to try and move the argument away from what you said, because you can’t admit you are incorrect. You start talking about thieves and elementalists.

Someone responds, asking if thieves and eles are heavies now. Perhaps they really thought you were implying they are? I mean, if we they thought you were at all intellectually honest, this could even be a proper reading of your response (it seems interesting that you don’t even consider this to be a possible proper reading of your response, isn’t it?). Perhaps they were pointing out your apparent intellectual dishonesty. In any event, it seems quite impossible for them to be making a deliberately obtuse comment.

It might seem as if you’re just looking for an excuse to stop responding, because you can’t admit you were incorrect at any point. Is this correct? Why not just admit you were wrong and stop digging the hole deeper?

Apparntly the filter filters out ack – now – led – ging because like… It’s a piece of kitty?

The amount of kittenty strawmans are not worth the effort. I didn’t say the encounter mandated reflects. I said not having a guardian made it much harder so that’s why people kick you in high level fractals because a random group does not coordinate enough to play specs that are not as selfsufficient as the heavies. Showing a video of a guild group contriving a scenario is not even acknowledging the context of this thread, which is a guy getting kicked from a RANDOM group because he didn’t have a class that is good for playing with random people.

But keep on making arguments for me and nitpicking instead of actually addressing the point I made: that ranger/necros as a whole are inferior classes with inferior toolkits and definitely inferior practical damage output.

Not gonna waste time on people who just want to play gotcha and argue over a forum on bad faith.

Zenith.7301:

I didn’t say the encounter mandated reflects

vs.

Zenith.7301:

It’s just a really badly designed fight that mandates the presence of a class with reflects, and especially a guardian because mesmer reflect is a lower duration skill compared to guardians, whose reflect skills can be chained and last longer.

You be the judge.

The more I read, the more I feel like chasing a rabbit down to the rabbit hole. He said ppl want “heavy only groups” for a reason (to which I say that they are bads and any of us knows not to join these group), then start saying how important ele and thieves are (???) How do these two arguments ever relate?

No, I dont believe guardians and ele’s are required for lvl40+ fractals. For shaman, ( as much as I hate saying it ) yes, guardians have become a requirement. For ele’s people are just used to the conjure weapon damage they provide for awhile now.

Iris Ng.9845:

The more I read, the more I feel like chasing a rabbit down to the rabbit hole. He said ppl want “heavy only groups” for a reason (to which I say that they are bads and any of us knows not to join these group), then start saying how important ele and thieves are (???) How do these two arguments ever relate?

Not how important. How BETTER than Ranger and Necro they are, and eles being IMPORTANT in WvW.

Zui.9245:

Zenith.7301:

I didn’t say the encounter mandated reflects

vs.

Zenith.7301:

It’s just a really badly designed fight that mandates the presence of a class with reflects, and especially a guardian because mesmer reflect is a lower duration skill compared to guardians, whose reflect skills can be chained and last longer.

You be the judge.

Did you read the entire post or chose to just cherrypick the paragraph, because the encounter does mandate spell reflects in a random group if you want to actually finish the fractal in less than 2 hours.

Or are you gonna argue that a 5 warrior video proves that reflection is optional for random groups?

No, really, bring me a video of a PUG doing shaman without reflects. I’m really waiting.

I think you’re the one who’s cherrypicking.

We are still talking about the Grawl Shaman encounter right? It’s still about dungeons and fracrals, right?

Why do we even mention about WvW? Last I remember, necro is better than all but guardian in WvW and every raid group has a couple of power ranger to snipe the enemy drivers, whereas thief being the least important role. But that’s a whole other matter.

Back to the topic, no other classes are better than the elementalists. And bad guards are equal to bad necro/ranger/thief/war/ele/engi/mesmer. You shouldn’t ask for a specific class in a pug group. Only thing we can do is pray for a good understanding and communication.

This argument is silly. Of course the proper use of reflects makes shaman easier. Of course knowing how to play your class and properly gearing and traiting are more important. Of course a good ranger brings more to the table than a guard who doesn’t know what “WoR” means. Iris is right: class understanding and communication come first. Zenith has been moving goalposts the last two pages. It seems to me like people should stop bothering trying to argue with him

Edit: I mean really, who would rather have a Guard who doesn’t know what “WoR” means over these two rangers:

Zenith.7301:

Did you read the entire post or chose to just cherrypick the paragraph, because the encounter does mandate spell reflects in a random group if you want to actually finish the fractal in less than 2 hours.

So now you’re insisting that you did say the encounter mandates reflects, while at the same time saying that:

Zenith.7301:

I didn’t say the encounter mandated reflects.

Are you serious here? Like, seriously?

As for reading your post, there are only two paragraphs that could be pertinent to the specifics here.

Zenith.7301:

It’s just a really badly designed fight that mandates the presence of a class with reflects, and especially a guardian because mesmer reflect is a lower duration skill compared to guardians, whose reflect skills can be chained and last longer.

That’s the single fight in the fractals where not having a guardian can royally screw your group over. The rest of the bosses are certainly harder without a guardian, because guardians are broken OP in fractals and pretty much anywhere else, but the presence of a guardian is nowhere near as critical as it is to the fire shaman.

Because you totally made the “in a random group if you want to actually finish the fractal in less than 2 hours” qualification in the post. Totally. It’s right in there. Wait… Where is it? Can you point it out?

You can claim you were talking about a specific context all you like, but it seems pretty strange to do that when in the same sentence you’re talking about a specific context you reference the all-context-encompassing thing that’s the fundamental design of the fight, which very strongly implies you’re talking about the fundamental nature of the fight, and not the extremely specific context of “a random group if you want to actually finish the fractal in less than 2 hours.” Then you go on to say something that’s entirely designed to reinforce what you just said, and definitely does not serve to narrow the context at all.

Perhaps this is all wrong, and you can paint a coherent picture of how all your statements on this topic actually don’t contradict each other at all? I’m not seeing it.

If that’s not clear to you from the thread title, a thread I chose to post on out of the very many threads there are on the topic of dungeons and fractals, then you are beyond help.

You seem to have a real problem grasping the idea that an encounter design that was intended to be done in several ways by the developer in practice has a completely different effect when random groups are considered (the majority of groups also running the content, I might say).

In fact I might even read those parts you bolded again if I were you. I don’t know what “royally screw” and “critical” mean to you, but certainly your ideas don’t seem to align with mine, and I have the suspicion you are less interested in even trying to understand what I am saying rather than just mocking an anonymous post on the forum.

It wasn’t clear to me from a 6-month old dead, necromancer-resurrected thread for a post written near the end of the third page which contained wording that suggested a deviation of context from the OP, no.

…I suppose I must be beyond help, as you suspected. I’ll just leave this discussion at that. I don’t think it’s going anywhere productive at this point.

Leave him be. Someone who thinks that contents are designed majorly with pick-up-groups in mind clearly doesn’t seem to align his idea with ours. Have a nice day!

That was sexy. I would love to play with those rangers. That was perfect team work, coordination, and selfless play. There was none of the phiw nonsense, seen in this thread, in that video.

I admit to being the the first one to groan or bail out when I see a ranger join a 30-50 fractal run, but it is entirely due to the combination of attitudes of rangers like the ones posting in this thread defending phiw…and actual play experience with these same minded rangers in high level fractals.

Good team work is what drives an enjoyable experience in games like this. I can’t even understand how this is even a topic for debate…bring the right tools for the job…just like everyone else in the group! If you have a reflect/anti-projectile ability…for an encounter that extremely benefits from it…then bring it!? I"m sorry your personal style/aesthetics objects to anything other than camping longbow…but the second you start impacting the enjoyment/success of others (joining a group)…your personal stuff just lost all importance. It has then become a communal experience and a communal decision for you to stay in the group. If you choose not to bring your best, then expect to be kicked. I’m not just talking about rangers either. Warriors with no war banner, guards with no reflects, thieves with no reflect or shadow refuge, etc.

You got to love that guy. He’s so funny. First he’s like :

Zenith.7301:

But by all means record that 5 ranger video and compare it to a video of 5 guardians or Warriors.

Zenith.7301:

Keep pretending as if the “lv50 fractal HEAVIES ONLY” daily posts on the LFG tool are some figment out of people’s imagination and people choose to favor heavies for no reason whatsoever.

then a bit of backpedaling

Zenith.7301:

Sure, they’re bad. Clearly rangers and necromancers come on equal footing to warrior/elementalist/thief/guardian.

But you still can see that he love himself some heavies.

Zenith.7301:

I said not having a guardian made it much harder so that’s why people kick you in high level fractals because a random group does not coordinate enough to play specs that are not as selfsufficient as the heavies.

I would take a ranger over a second warrior or guardian anytime. In a lot of encounter I I would take a ranger over 1 guardian.

Robinschultz.9652:

When is this kitten ever going to end? So I like playing my ranger, does this mean I become the blacksheep of the group as soon as something goes haywire?

So I joined this level 49 Fractal group, First and second fractal went just fine, then the third was Legendary Imbued Shaman aka the Pug killer.

Being a ranger, I prefer the longbow on this boss for the strong ranged dps and stealth for those annoying grubs that spawn.

So what happens is that everybody in my group went down because we didn’t have enough dps to take down the army of grubs that spawn. I was the only one standing and tried to kill some of the grubs to rally my teammates, this didn’t work out and suddenly I was standing in Lion’s Arch again.

This all really started on the second fractal when apparently the electric orbs the Harpy shoot that knock you down, Is now a ranger skill and I got told not to use the electric orb skill? So at that point they started hating at me, gentle but still.

I guess this story also fits for other classes such as Necromancer and Engineer these days. Pathetic really. I just wish people would look at their own faults and failures from time to time and stop pointing fingers at the ’’inferior’’ classes.

My 2 cents for today.

I read the first page of this thread and I noticed something interesting. The OP said one thing in their original post that caught my eye and that by the looks of everyone’s comments you all missed.

This all really started on the second fractal when apparently the electric orbs the Harpy shoot that knock you down, Is now a ranger skill and I got told not to use the electric orb skill?

The rest of that group told him to stop using the electric orb skill? My main is a level 80 ranger, we don’t have that skill. So this group was telling him to stop using a skill that he doesn’t even have which tells me he was grouped with morons.

The other thing that I found interesting is how the rest of the group died but he didn’t and they blamed him? Sorry but if you died then there is a pretty good chance it is your own dang fault, stop putting the blame on someone else.

Last but not least………………….First and foremost this is a game and I will play it the way that I want, the way that I enjoy. I do not expect others to play any way other than how they want. What I see a lot of in this thread is people telling the OP that he has to play the way that others think he should but the others don’t have to play the way that he thinks they should? That’s just a little one sided don’t you think? So, in other words, he is supposed to play the way that everyone else thinks he should but he isn’t allowed to tell anyone else how to play…………………..someone is seriously full of………………….kitten :-)