Guild Wars 2

This is my first post on the forum so bear with me. I have been playing this game steady over the past few weeks or so and until today I’ve not had a single really strong complaint about the game, and I’m the type that will complain about anything, in-fact I was actually tempted to make a post simply congratulating arenanet/ncsoft for doing such a bang up job on this game and making it less of a copy pasta of the play style of other mmorpgs.

But for the first time today I decided to take up a group invite from a guildie to run an instance(forget the name, it was in the charr lvl 1-15 starter area and was lvl 35). The spike trap part was great, creative and a different direction from the usual tank and spank fights I’m used to from other mmo’s(before anyone says it, yes I’ve played wow a bit, but the main mmo I played for over 7 years was everquest2, no I’m not a WoW fanboi) But then it got to the part in which we actually had to fight the mobs and things went to hell from there, we had 2 rangers, a warrior an ele and a guardian, apart from myself(the guard) all were lvl 78+. I cannot vouch for the capability or incapability of the other players in the group as I myself am still somewhat new to the game, but it was a total slaughterfest for the most part, I was 31 and was dieing non-stop(big surprize being a lvl 31 right) but that’s not what this thread is about, the entire group was dieing a lot.

There’s no threat system to this game as best I can tell, and the heals are minimal and limited. How exactly is the grouping in this game structured? Is it even? As best I can tell it’s complete chaos, run in, whoever tanks the mob tanks it and if people die ya crap all over the ele/guardian for not swapping to them fast enough when they get the aggro?(that’s if those classes are still alive as they may be the ones tanking).

Please do not go flame crazy on me as I said I’m new to the game and new to the forums, I’m probably just completely missing the concept, but to me it all seems like rubbish. Plz teach, don’t troll, thank you GW2 community.

You could have asked, “How does higher level grouping work? My experience thus far has shown me that I can’t just smash my face against my keyboard – are there roles, healing, how does enmity work?”

Two sentences, subtracted all the anecdotal and irrelevant portions and made a clear point that someone might actually read.

Instead, I had to see a grown man type “boi”.

Churchill.8714:

You could have asked, “How does higher level grouping work? My experience thus far has shown me that I can’t just smash my face against my keyboard – are there roles, healing, how does enmity work?”

Two sentences, subtracted all the anecdotal and irrelevant portions and made a clear point that someone might actually read.

Instead, I had to see a grown man type “boi”.

The more important question is how you knew I was a “grown man” lol… I actually am 32 and male, but ya I tend to keep up with the internet slang and I mostly added that little disclaimer to skip over the whole bullcrap “you’re such a newb go back to WoW” skit that ya tend to get when asking relevant questions.
And yes I did type a lot, I like to add as many details as possible so that people know of my specific scenario and have a better idea of why I’m asking the question to begin with.

As for the “smash my face against the keyboard” bit, hardly. In eq2 everyone had their role, they had 20-30 continuously used hotkeys, and if they didn’t perform their role up to par, people died. The solo play of this game doesn’t even require the keyboard to be smashed by the entire face, you may simply tap a button with your nose if you like. The grouping however is different from any other mmo I’ve played and I’ve played at least a half dozon, Aion, Rift,Eq2,WoW, and a few I don’t remember.

Key point if you want to skip that paragraph, I’m not an idiot, I just need someone to tell me how the grouping in this game works.

Due to the lack of a trinity, it is important to stak both offensive and defensive stats. Being a hybrid isn’t a thing in this game – there’s just surviving and not surviving.

Also, there is a threat system. Toughness adds to your threat generation. If you don’t want to become a target yet stack a survival stat, go with Vitality. Wearing a shield also adds threat generation. Reviving an ally brings you to the top of the threat table during the process.

More information can be found here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

Have you and your groupmates done control and support role also?
Base on situation, if some mobs are chasing one guy, the rangers can use traps/roots to help prevent the mobs approaching. For you , you have some skills to give you block/ageis/protection to reduce incoming damage.
You are not confined to melee even you are a heavy armor class. You need to kite in some fights.

Exploring dungeons in GW2 is never about who has what roles; this is because every profession, regardless if their decked as a glass cannon or beefy tank, has the capability to Control the fight, Support the party and hand out generous proportion of Damage.

Instead, consider how you can best handle each situation with your particular profession.

If you know you will die easily, then do your best at staying alive. This means if a mob is attacking you, or going to attack you, you find some way to Cripple, Chill, Knockdown, Knockback or Stun the attacker and run away until you are sure you have lost aggro.

If you have specifically chosen a lot of Vitality and/or Toughness in your build, then charge into the fray. However, if you find that your health is dropping fast and you are out of escapes, i.e. out of Endurance to dodge and evasion skills are on cooldown, then you back away from the fight, dropping whatever crowd control on the mob on your way out. From afar, you can continue to contribute to the fight by switching to your ranged weapons, assuming you have a set equipped, until your HP, Endurance and cooldowns permit you to wade back into the thick of matters.

If you have support skills, be it buffs, debuffs, group-wide heals and/or condition removals, then be sure to be liberal with them at the right moments.

While there is no set trinity, some classes and builds are better suited to be hit by the mobs, and other are better suited to cc and heal, and other better suited to be doing damage so long as they aren’t being hit for prolonged periods of time. You won’t have a dedicated tank because there are not constant and sustained heals. If you’re in melee range and you’re dying fast, there is no big incoming heal about to land. You have to back up, switch to ranged, or something, and let someone else pull the aggro. If you’re interested in how the threat works, this is helpful: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

I am sort of the “tank” of my guild group, and what that means is that I build my warrior into toughness, healing shouts, etc. In the end I’m not really a main tank, a boss can still two-shot me in some places. I’m a survivor with buffs and debuffs. I try to maintain the threat so that other can do the damage and support. But I can’t face tank some things. Sometimes I have to kite, someimes I have to just run out entirely and let someone else take it while I heal.

Guardians, warriors, and bunker eles tank in your group. Other classes can’t tank dungeon damage.

Warriors and thieves are the premier damage dealers in your group, followed after by eles and mesmers.

Utility wise, eles and guardians are your go to professions. Lesser support classes are necromancers and engineers.

Rangers are a bad PvE class regardless.

there are three roles

control, the one who are trying to get attention of the mobs,
you can do it in several ways
-generating aggro: face tanking or kiting
-CC, by non damaging conditions. chill, cripple, immobilize, stun, interrupt, weaken, etc

controllers should be bunkerish, some DPS and decent self heals.

support
since direct healing in this game will not save you , but put a bandage on a broken limb support is mainly via party boons and damage prevention, the more boons you can put on your group for the most of the time, the better support you are.
the more damage you can nullify via blinds/reflections/blocks you are better support
good support also have some control.

DPS
the most common role, damage dealers, the most common mistake that lead to party wipes is that players maximizing damage output, sacrificing survivability ,control and support completely.

good DPS will have some control/support ability or survivability.

Dungeons are also about “getting to know fights”. Usually, the “one hits” are telegraphed. Since there is no castbar telling you “XY is casting Melee Instant-Death”, you have to watch out for animations. Ascalon Catacombs is a wonderful dungeon to learn that, especially the explo mode. Kholer pulls you towards himself and then spins and does a ton of damage. If you watch the boss, you see him lifting his arm in a weird way before he does that, that’s when you know you have to dodge to not be pulled.
Adding to the things already mentioned in this thread: At the beginning you should roll with toughness and vitality, it does not make you able to face-tank most bosses, but it leaves more room for mistakes. Once you are more experienced, you can start switching to more squishy builds step by step.
With my warrior I have two sets of equipment always with me, and 8 different weapons to choose from depending on the dungeon and the group. If there is another warrior or guardian in melee with me, I will be able to do more damage and wear squishier gear. If not, and especially if I got other squishies close to me (d/d elementalist, thief etc), I switch to a heal/shout build, giving up quite a bit of dmg, but supporting/tanking/healing more.

We usually run ac with 1-2 low levels and the rest level 80, but when we first did ac story we were between lvl 26 and 45, so it is possible, but it was painful We died… and died… and died. It takes some getting used to, but i really enjoy this trinity free gameplay.

The roles in GW2 are:

DPS Kiter.

Svarty.8019:

The roles in GW2 are:

DPS Kiter.

The above is a bad myth that I would like to see put down. It saddens me to think that many people think that GW 2 dungeons is every man for himself doing whatever. It is not and especially now with the new WP changes in dungeons.

The key to remember is that no class is pigeon-holed into any particular role and so the key to dungeons is playing whatever role your team need to play. This requires an awareness of the field of play. I.e. not just the mob but your teammates.

For example, when you hear the ele say “water” or “oceans bend at my will” or whatever their particular character says to indicate they have switched attunement, you know a water combo field (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo – in case OP as a new player didn’t know what combo field were) is likely to be coming. Time to get your finisher ready to trigger regen/area heal etc to get extra heals.

If you team mate down? Is he/she hitting a mob with low health near him? Help him rally by taking that mob out quicker. Alternatively, he could be being revived by another teammate, that’s the time to ask ourself, what can I do to help them? It might be a simple as blinding the enemy that might be aggroed to them. Or simple pulling said enemy away.

In a nutshell: do what needs to be done. A team can support one, maybe two “lol I’ll just hit this thing with my giant sword and ignore everything else” but if everybody does that… well…

Tinni.4351:

Svarty.8019:

The roles in GW2 are:

DPS Kiter.

The above is a bad myth that I would like to see put down. It saddens me to think that many people think that GW 2 dungeons is every man for himself doing whatever. It is not and especially now with the new WP changes in dungeons.

Clearly, it’s not every man for himself, but every man DPSing the boss. At the same time, they are doing the other things that finish the encounter, clicking buttons, carrying batteries or whatever, but if you have a team full of DPSers, you won’t suffer any more than a team of mixed specs, so why roll anything else? See GW2LFG.COM Citadel of Flames > 4 Warriors and 1 Mesmer groups.

Tinni.4351:

The key to remember is that no class is pigeon-holed into any particular role and so the key to dungeons is playing whatever role your team need to play. This requires an awareness of the field of play. I.e. not just the mob but your teammates.
[..]

If you team mate down? [..] Alternatively, he could be being revived by another teammate, that’s the time to ask ourself, what can I do to help them? It might be a simple as blinding the enemy that might be aggroed to them. Or simple pulling said enemy away.

With examples like these, I’m can’t see many people buying your argument. For example, Blind won’t work reliably or for any length of time against bosses because of their buff.

Also, regarding classes not being pigeon-holed, I am yet to see a guardian in full berserker gear. Their innate HPs are a massive issue. I would not be at all surprised if there are other examples of pigeon-holing.

Svarty.8019:

Tinni.4351:

Svarty.8019:

The roles in GW2 are:

DPS Kiter.

The above is a bad myth that I would like to see put down. It saddens me to think that many people think that GW 2 dungeons is every man for himself doing whatever. It is not and especially now with the new WP changes in dungeons.

Clearly, it’s not every man for himself, but every man DPSing the boss. At the same time, they are doing the other things that finish the encounter, clicking buttons, carrying batteries or whatever, but if you have a team full of DPSers, you won’t suffer any more than a team of mixed specs, so why roll anything else? See GW2LFG.COM Citadel of Flames > 4 Warriors and 1 Mesmer groups.

I am sorry but what are you getting at exactly? If all your team needs you to do is DPS that’s what you do. I mean, your team maybe full of pro-dodgers who know the encounter inside out and thus don’t need additional support in the form of your utilities or your skills. So just DPS the boss. I mean, I change my utilities and traits from encounter to encounter depending on what I think the team needs. Why would an ele, for example, bother attuning to water if the team doesn’t need the healing it provides?

Svarty.8019:

Tinni.4351:

The key to remember is that no class is pigeon-holed into any particular role and so the key to dungeons is playing whatever role your team need to play. This requires an awareness of the field of play. I.e. not just the mob but your teammates.
[..]

If you team mate down? [..] Alternatively, he could be being revived by another teammate, that’s the time to ask ourself, what can I do to help them? It might be a simple as blinding the enemy that might be aggroed to them. Or simple pulling said enemy away.

With examples like these, I’m can’t see many people buying your argument. For example, Blind won’t work reliably or for any length of time against bosses because of their buff.

Also, regarding classes not being pigeon-holed, I am yet to see a guardian in full berserker gear. Their innate HPs are a massive issue. I would not be at all surprised if there are other examples of pigeon-holing.

Even 5 seconds of blind can mean the difference between your teammate successfully rallying/reviving or dying. I have lost count of how many times the mob I was trying to rally off died a second after I did. Even 1 second of blind that would have made that mob’s last hit miss would have saved me.

Also, there are guardians running around in full Berserker gear. I know a guardian who has specced entirely for damage for Fractals and working on maximising his critical chance. Yes Guardians have low HP pools but that just means you can’t play a Guardian like you do a warrior. It doesn’t mean a Guardian has to wear PVT gear or high vitality gear in a vain attempt to boost their HP. That’s just trying to make your class into something it isn’t.

Lots of info on roles, support vs. control vs. damage has already been covered, so I won’t get into that.

What I will suggest is that the key to getting started in dungeons is to arm yourself with knowledge. I suggest taking a look at wiki.guildwars2.com and reading over the info in the guide before moving into the dungeon. The wiki does not contain 100% of what you need to know, but it does contain some useful information that is better than going in unprepared.

Discuss priority targets with your team, having one person responsible for calling targets and making sure the team follows those targets can be a HUGE help in quickly eliminating the most dangerous threats in many encounters.

If you find your party is struggling, back up, and talk about it. Try to avoid throwing yourselves at an encounter repeatedly…. if it failed, see if you can figure out why and look at your skill bar to see if you need to make adjustments.

I will also mention that if you went into the Ascalonian Catacombs explorable mode at lvl 31, you’re a touch under level, the dungeon is set at lvl 35, and that’s going to impact you as well. Ascalonian Catacombs (Story) is set for level 30.

Browse the forums for tips on specific dungeons as you go, there’s a great deal of information out there. Also, it doesn’t hurt when you see groups that are LF More to whisper the person chatting and ask if they’re willing to teach a new player. I frequently find myself teaching people how to do Oozes in CoF p1 because most groups don’t even know they’re there.

Cheers, and GL!

It’s not a matter of roles, it’s a matter of working with whatever class comes your way. Anybody can be anything, but if you understand classes well, you will know how to make use of certain skills for certain situations.

A mesmer can timewarp. They can strip boons from enemies with constant boon uptime.

A guard can reflect projectiles really well and provide the most reliable source of aegis which could most of the time save the team from a 1hitko

etc

The recommended level is their for another reason : if you are under your aggro range is bigger, so be careful about that.

Aside from that, the difficulty of the run doesn’t fall entirely on your shoulders. It’s also on your teammates. But as long as you try to improve, you’ll get better.
There are a ton of tips posters could give you, but the best way to learn them is to find them by yourself and to see what works and what doesn’t work.

Lalangamena.3694:

there are three roles

control, the one who are trying to get attention of the mobs,
you can do it in several ways
-generating aggro: face tanking or kiting
-CC, by non damaging conditions. chill, cripple, immobilize, stun, interrupt, weaken, etc

controllers should be bunkerish, some DPS and decent self heals.

support
since direct healing in this game will not save you , but put a bandage on a broken limb support is mainly via party boons and damage prevention, the more boons you can put on your group for the most of the time, the better support you are.
the more damage you can nullify via blinds/reflections/blocks you are better support
good support also have some control.

DPS
the most common role, damage dealers, the most common mistake that lead to party wipes is that players maximizing damage output, sacrificing survivability ,control and support completely.

good DPS will have some control/support ability or survivability.

Agreed. Instead of the usual holy trinity, This game introduces a concept of an offensive trinity.

This offensive trinity will disappear if other professions have better damage migrating skill, lower mob damage, and lower mob health.

At first it does seem like chaos, and with novice groups it will be so. But as you gain experience and join more experienced parties you’ll see the flow and structure of GW2 dungeon fights.

The roles are still there, it’s just they are fluid and ever switching. Someone, who has the aggro, kites and dodges the boss, other people do max DPS, and sometimes everyone turn into healers, when they ress a downed party member.

1 stay alive/up – going down hurts everyone
2 if your profession has a team/group buff ability(s) bring and use it
3 rotate your attack skills so your not just standing there waiting on CD
4 see #1 above

Isslair.4908:

At first it does seem like chaos, and with novice groups it will be so. But as you gain experience and join more experienced parties you’ll see the flow and structure of GW2 dungeon fights.

The roles are still there, it’s just they are fluid and ever switching. Someone, who has the aggro, kites and dodges the boss, other people do max DPS, and sometimes everyone turn into healers, when they ress a downed party member.

If roles are constantly changing, then there is no “roles.”

I’m getting a laugh at the OP. Because it’s true. When you first get your feet wet in dungeons, you gonna die.

I think the part that makes the difference though is knowing the enemy. All the talk about support, CC, kiting, etc is all well and good but it really does little when you don’t have knowledge of the enemy…and having knowledge of the enemy is almost all you need to survive most encounters (in AC at the very least).

The gravelings have a variety of attacks you probably want to look out for, one being their flip-evade-claw attack which lets them hit you multiple times while dodging your attacks and it causes vulnerability on you…it also hits pretty hard. You might as well dodge away from them since swinging or shooting at them won’t cause any harm.

Then there’s the graveling ‘class’ specific attacks. The Breeder class spits up lots of little gravelings. They’re not that dangerous alone (and don’t attack very often) but each time they attack it causes bleeding. Having 5-10 of these little guys chasing you to hit you once can stack lots of bleed which will drop you if you’re not savvy enough to stop the Breeder by interrupting it, kill it fast while it’s spitting up (it doesn’t do anything while it’s spitting up, leaving it open for attack) or quickly dispose of the summoned gravelings with AoEs.

The Howler class, while it also has the flip-evade-claw attack, it spends most of its time using various howls. These howls, I believe, buff all its graveling buddies with might. He also does a cone howling scream that knocks you and allies back and stuns you for a bit. You can either dodge away, move around him so he only stuns you rather than all your buddies next to you (if he’s attacking you with it), use stability so that you can’t be knocked/stunned or a block maneuver to shield yourself. If you get knocked down, you can use a stun breaker to get back up faster. Another point about the Howlers, they seem to be more sturdy than the rest. People usually defeat them last as it’s better to dispose of more threats quickly at the start.

Lastly there’s the Scavenger class which are probably the most annoying. These have a deadly leaping attack that, if you don’t dodge, can knock you down and then follow up with a continuous barrage of headbutt that will keep knocking you down and do quite a bit of damage. The most annoying thing though is, this can affect multiple group members and one has to be careful around a scavenger who is headbutting as they could find themselves taking heavy damage or knocked on the ground helpless. To combat this, dodge is the easiest bet, move away after he does the leap. You can also cripple or chill them which shortens their leap distance often leading to him not reaching you or allies. You can use stability or blocks to defend against the initial attack but it’s still important to move away from it. Lastly, there’s CC; knock the guy back, stun or freeze him before he lands the leap (before it leaps or while it’s leaping).

The best way to support, IMO, is with area effects like damage on breeders or control on the scavengers. It’s also very important to rez someone who’s been tackled by a scavenger. Either CC the scavenger then pick up your teammate or just position yourself and safely bring up your friend while they’re being attacked. After the scavenger finishes his headbutts, he stuns himself for a couple seconds (banging your head against armored adventurers will do that) to which your ally will be up and ready for revenge.

Beyond that, there are special ‘sequences’ to the various events to make them easier that you might have fun learning on your own or you can look up some guides too. But it’s always important to know the enemy! Then you can dodge and defend against their attacks.

Rainer Fenixhart.1357:

If roles are constantly changing, then there is no “roles.”

False.
It just that you don’t choose the roles beforehand, you fit to the role you’re given in current moment.

Xephier.1647:

we had 2 rangers

I found your problem.

As people mentioned, there are pretty much 3 roles in a successful party in dungeons. It really doesn’t became apparent until you start running organized groups because it requires teamwork and synergy that you’re not going to get in a PuG, so usually PuGs end up trying to balance everything which is the main reason they have so much trouble with dungeons alot of the time.

Now the first thing to note, no group comp is going to allow you to just face tank everything like in a traditional MMO. Dodge is there to avoid the big telegraphed attacks that will down you no-matter what, the rest of the time your group comp will allow you to deal with all of the other attacks that you don’t need to dodge. A big reason groups fail is because they don’t know/recognize the attacks they need to dodge, no class or group comp is going to help you succeed if you don’t dodge or know your enemy. So part of failing at first, is because you are learning the moves and attacks of the bosses/mobs in the dungeon you are running. If you are dieing and don’t learn from it, you fail as a player, no matter what your class is.

As far as roles:

1. “Anchor” – The Anchor is your tank. Their purpose is to draw agro to allow the other classes to focus on dps and “cast-time” support skills. This class will naturally have the highest toughness because it allows them to take priority when pulling agro. The main class that is used as an anchor is Guardian, because they have extremely good survivability skills and can support through shouts and reflection skills which have no cast time (except for Shield of Avenger). There are some other classes that have the ability to be an anchor, but not as good as a Guardian can. Which is why Guardian is a tier 1 class. I always only run 1 anchor except in high level fractals where 2 guardians can be useful.

2. DPS – This is your traditional dps role. Something like a warrior or thief excels at this because of their traits/skills which allow them to maximize dps potential. If you are running an organized group that has an anchor and proper support skills, these can very easily run full berserkers for dps. Now just like all classes, they still have some utility based on the class (i.e. banners/shouts for warrior, stealth for thief) but they are primarily focused on maximizing dps. Anyone who is running a dps build wants to eat omnomberry pies because you will still take minor, aoe, and or/condition damage even with an anchor sometimes, so regen/leech is what allows you to stay in melee range to maximize dps (along with proper dodging bigger attacks of course.) You are always going to have 2 of these roles, and many times you’ll have 3 of them.

Because of the way you cooldowns work in this game, and because there are many events across dungeons that focus on dps to make things easier, this is the number one role that most PuGs fail at, because they are worried about balancing. It is significantly easier to “burst down” a bunch of bosses and events in <1 minute before all of your skills cycle to cooldown, which you can only do with dps roles. In dungeons, most mobs and bosses do significant damage, even with full survivability gear. A group who is balanced and takes 40 seconds to kill a group of silver mobs for instance, is going to have a much harder time then a group with 3 dps classes that can burst down the same group in 15 seconds, while you can still cycle your blinds/knockdowns/reflects/etc. before they go on cooldown. This is what most PuGs fail to realize. Their balanced builds with survivability have much less survivability then a group with 3 berserker classes that both take less time and are safer bursting down the same bosses in a fraction of the time because of the way skills work in this game to mitigate or burst damage.

3. “Support” – Now every class has utility and support, but usually you fill in one slot with a class that adds the things that your group is missing to fill out their utility. This is usually going to be either a Mesmer or Ele. Ele gives you combo fields and the ability to support through a variety of spells through attunements based on what you need. The Mesmer brings huge utility through skills, everything from stealth, reflection, boon stripping, “boon bursting” with signet, and of course Time Warp. Now support doesn’t mean you need to take cleric’s set or something, it’s more for their for the skills and combo fields while still providing some damage. So for instance, my mesmer is still in full berserker’s gear, but they have alot of support through their skills that you miss out on with guardians and warriors in the other 2 slots.

Once you become familiar with dungeons and start running in more organized groups, you start to realize how much easier and smoother dungeons go when you run specific roles and take classes that fill those roles.

Zenith.7301:

Guardians, warriors, and bunker eles tank in your group. Other classes can’t tank dungeon damage.

Warriors and thieves are the premier damage dealers in your group, followed after by eles and mesmers.

Utility wise, eles and guardians are your go to professions. Lesser support classes are necromancers and engineers.

Rangers are a bad PvE class regardless.

Great PvE profession. Pathetic dungeon profession. Massive overhaul required.

Nurse.1085:

Xephier.1647:

we had 2 rangers

I found your problem.

This is AC we are talking about…Even if it was Arah or CoE, having 2 rangers in your team isn’t an excuse for losing.

Grouping is largely about trading blows, focusing fire, and coming to the aid of downed players. That’s it. Bring enough survivability so you can fend for yourself while doing as much damage as possible while bringing “something” to the table for the group.

Nurse.1085:

Xephier.1647:

we had 2 rangers

I found your problem.

I dunno.

I know at least couple rangers who do really well in dungeons and it’s always a nice run with them.

On the other hand like 90% of PUG rangers are sooo bad (eles, engis and thieves have the same problem) that you kinda want to kick them out right.

But it doesn’t matter at all in AC.

Blacklight.2871:

Zenith.7301:

Guardians, warriors, and bunker eles tank in your group. Other classes can’t tank dungeon damage.

Warriors and thieves are the premier damage dealers in your group, followed after by eles and mesmers.

Utility wise, eles and guardians are your go to professions. Lesser support classes are necromancers and engineers.

Rangers are a bad PvE class regardless.

Great PvE profession. Pathetic dungeon profession. Massive overhaul required.

Rangers can actually be quite useful and good in dungeons so long as the ranger in question knows how to micro-manage their pet. A well-played ranger is hard to kill and can output sustained damage and conditions. Pets may not be the most useful in the boss fights, but they are good against all other mobs if handled well.

Wow, this is a crazy amount of helpful information, I’ve never gotten this on forums before. Most forums appear to be full of Ritalin-lacking children and bored lonely trolls. Thank you Gw2 community. I’ve decided (based on this information) that instead of alting to/leveling my ele for group healing capability, I’m going to go back to my guardian and bulk up on toughness.

A couple more questions though, is damage at all a factor in getting aggro, for instance, if I stack toughness/vitality, am I going to lose aggro because I’m not doing enough dmg?
Also, that support is very good to have, blocking attacks removing conditions but without healing the lost life it seems to me the group would likely fail anyways. Is it often the case that an ele in water stance(with a staff – the healing rain seems to be the best group heal in this game short of the guardian’s slightly more limited full group heal) is either a requirement or at least strongly suggested towards the survivability in any given dungeon?

You just need to learn the encounters and dodge stuff. If everyone does this and has good DPS, you roll through everything. There are no effective roles other than DPS, though you can try and add support into the mix. Once you’re beyond noob stage, defensive stats are somewhat of a waste.

^And then you are back to square one. So Yaki would you say the most important thing is to get dodge regenerating as fast as possible?

The best heals in the game are the #6 skills. All the other stuff is only to hold you off from needing #6 right away or until it’s off cooldown.

The best support is boons/conditions and well place CC. Healing is more a secondary support along with condition removal. And the best tank is someone who can dodge well enough to not need any of those.

Aggro feels pretty mysterious to me. It’s very mob dependant and I haven’t really delved into that well of knowledge yet. Some mobs aggro whatever is closest to them and/or who has done damage to them while some seem to want to attack players with specific equipment (i.e. light armor or is using a shield). The best way to lose aggro is to run away from the mob while staying close seems to help maintain the mob’s attention. The most definite way to loose aggro is via stealth.

I don’t know the specifics on aggro though but the best way I’ve learned, again, is get close when you’re high but run away when you’re low.

Horrorscope.7632:

^And then you are back to square one. So Yaki would you say the most important thing is to get dodge regenerating as fast as possible?

You don’t have infinite dodge, though. Even with vigor (100% Endurance regeneration or recover Endurance 2x faster) the fastest one can recover endurance, you will be without endurance if you spam dodge.

That said, you don’t need vigor to survive but it helps. Most encounters are doable with proper placement and timed dodges. Often vigor is moreso used for on-dodge effects like Elementalist’s Evasive Arcana that casts a spell when you dodge or Mesmer’s Deceptive Evasion that creates clones when you dodge.

It’s better to be able to use your dodges effectively, not just to be able to dodge more.

Thanks.

Dodge Wars 2. I do it, but I must be able to do it a lot better, it sounds as that is the most important thing you can do in dungeons to stay alive. I won’t say that it makes total sense, but it’s more of “it is what it is”.