Guild Wars 2

I’m a big dungeon player and ever since launch I’ve always been of the belief that survivability is key in dungeons so I have always tried to increase my toughness/armor. Currently I lay just below 2800 armor. I’m a longbow/shortbow ranger and was told that armor doesn’t really matter in dungeons. I’m wondering am I being inefficient in thinking that I should have some armor and survivability and should I switch to zerker gear. I’m traited 20/30/10/0/10. Or is it that armor is actually a benefit to have and those telling me to switch to zerkers have no basis?

sad to say this but its the opposite….

Anet made so you can ’t survive more than a couple hits (often you get oneshot).

Mobs and bosses have unreasonable dps, thus there are 3 way to survive:

1) damage NEGATION
2) kill threats before they can do something
3) rally

Due to that anything that isn t zerker is subpar in dungeons…..
Only time you may need some thoughness and vit is when you try to ress someone.

Unless anet review how pve works there is nothing but zerker and dps for dungeons.

passive defense is just useless.

Survivability is inefficient, yes. If you down you can normally rally off a mob if a boss spawns weak adds, and their attacks are normally extremely lethal so damage mitigation is pointless and you should just roll out the way.

If you get downed in a dungeon, you’re pretty much toast. Mobs and bosses are unlikely to change their target, and will hit you when you’re down to finish you off. (thus often making the down state itself pointless in dungeons)

I have noticed that toughness does reduce the damage you take by a lot… but unfortunately it also draws aggro. So either way the system is broken.

3 steps to become efficient in dungeons.
1) Reroll Warrior.
2) Get full Berserker Gear.
3) Throw all ranged weapons away, learn to dodge.

“Survivability” in dungeons isn’t as bad as it is made out to be on the forums. A large portion of the very experienced playerbase has moved to a very heavy DPS based mentality, and when they see someone/some group doing poorly in dungeons, it is often assumed that he is wearing “survivability” gear, when the performance is probably better attributed to dungeon inexperience.

Full DPS parties work really well for most of the content in this game if everyone in the group is very experienced at that content, since unfortunately a lot of the content (especially the more frequently run content) boils down to what utilities to bring and which attacks to dodge/reflect. There are also many dungeon paths with fairly hard DPS checks, but few with hard survivability checks.

However, in groups with less organization, experience, or party-wide dps, support builds can be very helpful to keep the group moving through the dungeon at a reasonable pace. However, to be useful to the party it’s important to focus on the party’s survivability, not your individual survivability. Preventing the party from taking damage through aegis/blind, reducing part wide incoming damage with protection/weakness, taking aggro [without dying] so that the rest of the party can focus on damage, healing the party from damage they receive, and reviving downed players can all help turn a crazy pull-gone-wrong into a successful dungeon run. However, doing these things usually involves building for party survivability rather than personal survivability. If you’re concerned about personal survivability, practice will help much more than gear in the long term.

Whether or not you should build for support or DPS depends on a lot of factors, group experience being a very important one. It also sounds like you’re ranged most of the time, in which case fewer enemies will even be able to attack you, so dps gear is probably more beneficial.

Some of the information getting thrown around in this thread is also ridiculous:

colesy.8490:

Survivability is inefficient, yes. If you down you can normally rally off a mob if a boss spawns weak adds, and their attacks are normally extremely lethal so damage mitigation is pointless and you should just roll out the way.

Although there are 1-shot downed attacks in the game (Arah’s Crusher), most individual attacks can be mitigated by armor/healing/vitality, although you definitely can’t rely on those to take all attacks. It takes 4 of Lupicus’s ranged attacks/AoE hits to down a high health/high toughness character, and some classes can heal most of that health back. If you are wearing all zerkers, many attacks are less forgiving.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

If you get downed in a dungeon, you’re pretty much toast. Mobs and bosses are unlikely to change their target, and will hit you when you’re down to finish you off. (thus often making the down state itself pointless in dungeons)

I have noticed that toughness does reduce the damage you take by a lot… but unfortunately it also draws aggro. So either way the system is broken.

If you’ve got a good team, getting downed in a dungeon shouldn’t usually mean getting defeated. If people are getting defeated in your party, it would probably become faster if one of you geared for strong support and helped keep everyone else alive.

As to toughness and aggro, the system is not broken: it’s actually good that toughness draws aggro. If it didn’t, building toughness would only increase personal survivability, not party survivability, and would become pointless if you were experienced enough to survive without it. By drawing aggro, a character can take the focus of enemies off of party memebers so that they can concentrate on damage without worrying about dying. If your character/build isn’t able to survive taking the aggro, you’re right, you probably shouldn’t build for high toughness.

Use skills to avoid damage in dungeons. Use gear for damage. You don’t need to turn into a glass cannon but there’s certainly a line of thought that a ranger should really contribute to a group and not just hide 1200m away from anything dangerous in tough armor.

Well I do use longbow but I am definitely in the thick of the fight with my shortbow many times. But it sounds to me like it doesn’t really matter I should just go for DPS and glass cannon.

Btw my current gear is knights. Power Precision and Toughness.

It really depends on the group, I generally pug. In most pugs I find my support d/d elementalist much better than my zerk warrior. Why? Because players take damage because they can’t always dodge, so the ability to heal and protect them when needed is great. Players go down, and don’t always tag a mob, so you need to rez them often under enemy fire.The generally can’t max might, so I can help boost their damage.

When running with mates I might go zerk, if they can handle themselves OK.

BUT long story short, depends on your team and how comfortable you are. If you need a bit of extra toughness to mitigate non-spike damage use it. But if you find you only ever go down if you mess up and get hit by the bosses spike, throw in a bit more damage.There is no point running all PVT if you could survive fine running a bit more damage.

Also consider having spare kit, if I find a team is fine and doesn’t need to be picked up I’ll pop in more zerk parts into my armor.

Dub.1273:

3 steps to become efficient in dungeons.
1) Reroll Warrior.
2) Get full Berserker Gear.
3) Throw all ranged weapons away, learn to dodge.

This would be the best advise. If you want to stay ranger though you will contribute less but at least bring a bow and a gs and get berserker gear. Use bow to fall back on or use longbow 2 at the start then run in with gs right after. Rangers bring so little/no utility value so you mine as well bring a decent amount of dps. If you range the entire dungeon with knights gear you are pretty much a waste of a party slot. Most rangers run this kind of setup and make the answer to this question a firm yes….. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Do-people-still-hate-avoid-RANGER-and-THIEF/page/6#post2235304

I have several ranger friends that love their SB/GS or some other SB/melee setup and refuse to follow the three-step program that Dub suggested.

Upping your toughness as an LB/SB ranger is a bad idea – a lot of mobs will aggro on the character with the most toughness, so as you mentioned you end up “in the thick of the fight” stuck with two ranged weapons. If you still WANT to be the tanky ranger, o you can, but you should adjust your weapon choice so that you can take advantage of the DPS and party support (fields via healing spring and traps, the occasional clutch SaR when it doesn’t bug) you can do in melee. If you’re okay with sacrificing armor, yes, slowly sub some of your pieces out with zerker gear – but don’t be afraid to keep them in your bag in case you can’t stay up in a fight. Remember, dead zerker = 0 DPS.

Another alternative is possibly going soldiers instead – you’ll keep the survivability of knights but won’t be as likely to pull aggro. You may also be putting out a bit more damage.

Unfortunately, starting with anything ranger is relatively inefficient compared to warr or guard.

Surviving in dungeons? DODGE!!! Ranger can even trait to more endurance regg, maybe a signet of Energy and here you go! just learn the moves from the enemies.

Srsly there is a DODGE-function, you can dodge almost all atacks, and its like invulnerability… so whats the big woop?

And btw doding rly makes the whole fun for me, without need to keep attention and dodge its so…..fluffy kitten boring. I dont understand why some ppl just dont do it xD

DelOnasi.6051:

“Survivability” in dungeons isn’t as bad as it is made out to be on the forums. A large portion of the very experienced playerbase has moved to a very heavy DPS based mentality, and when they see someone/some group doing poorly in dungeons, it is often assumed that he is wearing “survivability” gear, when the performance is probably better attributed to dungeon inexperience.

^This
Forums are always going to be full of Hyperbole & ‘internet tough guys’.

Most dungeon runs aren’t going to be 5 uber-experienced spikers who dodge perfectly all of the time. And playing with those sorts of people gets boring really fast IMO. Plus, if you’re a longer time player with gold to burn, there’s no ‘fight club’ rules here saying you can’t get another bag slot just for a second or 3rd set of armor to switch to in the less common event, that no one’s ever getting hit back by anything. :\

I run mostly Vitality, Crit, Tough on my ranger too. It’s not some crutch. It’s just a reflection of the reality that things change, and Anet likes changing things. Maybe not every month, but certainly every year… And I don’t like respec’ing my entire approach to things that often just b/c some speedrun kiddies followed the next fad and expect everyone to embrace that month’s flavor with them.

There seems to be a great deal of stereotyping that indicates I can’t dodge or I stand at 1200-1500 range only using my longbow and don’t move a muscle. That was not part of the question at all solely my gear. Doing the math switching to zerkers gear I’m gaining only just about 190 power. The only benefit is that my crit damage rises from 35% to around ~60%-65%. Is that worth it? Or should I switch my accessories to zerker and keep knights on? Does 190 power really make that much of a difference?

Crit damage scales best on accessories . So you want berserker there first.

ilr.9675:

^This
Forums are always going to be full of Hyperbole & ‘internet tough guys’.

Most dungeon runs aren’t going to be 5 uber-experienced spikers who dodge perfectly all of the time. And playing with those sorts of people gets boring really fast IMO.

No one pretends to dodge perfectly. But you know what, even when mistakes happen in a speedclear, the run will still go much faster than any run that would incorporate a ranger like you clad in toughvit gear. I never had any speedclear group wiping at any point during CoE runs. Sometimes a person or two going down from a missed dodge, lag or being tired late at night. But even with one person going down once or twice during a 3 path run, guess what ? It’s going to be a MUCH faster run than a group filled with 5 kitties like you. The zerk war who died after a mistake or lag in the middle of an alpha fight still did more damage output than you’d do for the whole duration and did a much larger contribution to the run.

There is a reason why these runs always sit between 10 and 15 minutes and you don’t see that in a pug filled with PVT. When the run goes perfectly it goes closer to 10 minutes. But even when people DO mess up it never takes more than 15 minutes because whoever went down already contributed far more to the run than a kitty toughvit ranger.

You can go ahead and call us “internet tough guys” as a way to dismiss something you don’t want to see. Such loser mentality that you didn’t even try and see how much better it works and then call people who did try and succeeded liars. Despite all the video evidence we can give you from our runs.

I’ll just finish with this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAzExrIyZzU
A really shiny example of the truth you want to deny. There is exactly only two times I had to dodge in that fight, and it’s the end boss of the path. Only two times where someone can mess up. And it’s highly unlikely that the whole group would mess up in one go. Even if someone had died in that vid it would’ve just taken something like 5 to 10 seconds more which is like infinitely faster than any sort of pug.

Why in the nine hells would anyone hate being efficient?

Anyone running anything other than full berserker at this point in time just shows zero understanding of this game’s PVE.

Why in the nine hells would anyone hate being efficient?

Because of hipsters wanting to hate on the zerker meta.

If I go PVT it gives me more survivability! No dude, dodges do, except now your DPS sucks.

Conversations about the meta aside, this is more about your weapon choices. If the long and shortbows are the weapons you enjoy the most knights gear isn’t a top choice. You don’t really need survivability as much if you’re not going to be standing in melee range and having to worry about getting hit a lot. Shortbow is more of a condition damage weapon but the longbow can benefit from berserker gear. Personally I would decide which of those two weapons I like more and pick a secondary that also fits into the same damage role.
Don’t feel like you have to go berserker gear to play, but using those weapons you could do better with a different type of gear. Now if you want to get into speed clearing then yeah you’ll want to learn to play with berskerer gear and you’ll also need to use a greatsword and a sword mainhand (offhand dagger or axe works equally well with that playstyle), but if all you want to do is have fun playing dungeons then keep using the weapons you enjoy. Find yourself a dungeon running guild and run with friends. You don’t have to abandon your ranger to make a warrior, you may not get into Pug speed runs with a ranger but you can get into groups just fine. I do however recommend running with guildies over Pugs, more cohesion and more determination to work together.

If you want survivability, put a Superior Sigil of Energy on one of your weapons = extra dodges.

colesy.8490:

Why in the nine hells would anyone hate being efficient?

Because of hipsters wanting to hate on the zerker meta.

If I go PVT it gives me more survivability! No dude, dodges do, except now your DPS sucks.

That last sentence made me chuckle. I like your attitude.

I wouldn’t call them hipsters as much as I’d call them self-entitled snowflakes who feel cheated because they found out their profession is trash in PvE. Complain about it all you want, but either adapt to the current state of PvE, and wait to see if Anet ever does an overhaul where Support and Control actually become useful, or keep doing slow runs.

Also, I’d love to see that overhaul. PvE actually accommodating the entire trinity Anet envisioned. DPS not being God anymore. Sure, runs might slow down a bit, but in the end, we would still be the fastest, and we would still come up with the best group comps (be it us, DnT or some other high-end PvE guild), and we would still feed on the tears of sh*tters who can’t handle anything more complicated than CoF and constantly whine about boss encounters being too hard for them.

Right now the only classes that aren’t really good for dungeons (compared to the others) are necro, engi, and ranger. Necro and engi only because their best aoe damage is conditions (power necro has very little sustainable aoe, staff auto doesn’t count and marks/wells are too long cd). Engi is also condition dependent except his amazing aoe barrage is easy to fail with (people miss their nades a lot). Also a lot of people make these classes look way worse than what they are. Bad player stigma ftw. They aren’t bad they just aren’t as good as the other classes.

Rangers on the other hand actually are bad in dungeons. The pets are a liability but b/c they exist, the ranger dps is halved to compensate. They also take up bleed stacks from players that should have them. It’s a rough life.

The reason why conditions are bad is because there’s condition caps and certain damaging conditions stack duration instead of intensity. You could be pouring out poison or burning but it will only tick once every 5 seconds b/c your teamates are also applying poison or burning. You could be applying massive bleeds that do 130 damage per tick but the warrior and mesmer on your team have just applied 5-10 stack of bleeds each and their 60 damage per tick is stopping you from laying out even more stacks of your own. Not to mention if there’s 2 condition players in your group! You’ll both do half the damage you should be doing.

So as it has been said, zerker is the only way to go. You only need enough survivability to live through 1 good attack but only as long as you’re not sure you can’t avoid that attack.

Warrior is very easy to do well in dungeon but it’s very boring to play imo. It’s basically swimming with floaters. If you want to do just as much (more in some situations, less in others), play a thief or ele. If you want more team survivability support with less damage, go guard (don’t build your ele support). If you want team utility support, go mesmer or thief. If you want damage support, go mesmer or war. If you want to have a very active and extremely powerful support, go thief and get an ele friend or ele and get a thief friend (look up fields and finishers). In terms of damage, warrior does the best melee aoe damage, ele has the best damage but it’s highly situational, and thief has the highest single target dps.

And last but certainly not least, learn to dodge.

tldr ~ that’s a write up on the current state of dungeons and it provides some good tips for what you might want to choose when starting out.

Basically every post here has told you to gear up in full Berserker and Learn to Dodge. I can tell you from experience that maybe 5% of my PuGs have had people in full berserker who know how to dodge. After ressing them 6 times because OMG WHAR DID DAT MOSSMAN AXE EVIN COME FROM?! WTF?!?!! we just let them eat the floor for the whole fight. It’s a waste of our DPS to res zerker-geared people who can’t time their dodges, and a dead zerker whatever does zero DPS.

Maybe the forum is full of people in berserker gear who know how to dodge, but trust me when I say that 95% of the zerker-geared people on gw2lfg.com are not worth having in your party.

That said, it’s the reason why I run PVT gear on my guardian for ‘harder’ dungeons like Arah and FotM 40+. If I want damage, I’d bring my zerker warrior along. If I want to make sure that we don’t wipe 20 times because one person in the party is made of paper and can’t dodge to save their lives – literally – then my PVT guardian draws aggro while the zerker whatevers can do their DPS.

Everyone says just run zerker for DPS but the truth is if you’re a zerker anything other than warrior, your damage is going to be subpar. I’m not telling you to reroll a warrior – if you like a ranger, you should play it – but PPT rangers work just fine in dungeons.

If you want to go zerker, I suggest you try getting in melee range in PPT to learn how to dodge well. Consider PPT gear to be like training wheels. Watch for those boss signs, time your dodges and when you are very comfortable with the dungeon(s) you enjoy doing, slowly swap out to zerker. Don’t just follow everyone blindly and go full zerker on Day One – you’ll be dead for half the dungeon and the remaining party members won’t have much sympathy for you.

EDIT: One last thing – dungeons are part of the game. Dungeons are to be enjoyed. There are plenty of people who treat it as a farm where you must have zerker gear and ruby whatevers to complete it under 10 minutes, but there are plenty of people who just go in and talk about the latest episode of Game of Thrones and have a lot of fun. Don’t ruin your dungeon experience because you’re talking to a whole horde of people who want to “farm farm farm farm farmfarmfarm TOKENS AND GOLD YES I got my full exotic/ascended set + my legendary, now I’m bored…”

While it may be the case right now that DPS is more valued in dungeons than survivability, there are actually some of us dungeon runners who love to take first timers along, who don’t mind spending a few more minutes at bosses, cracking jokes in game and sometimes over teamspeak half the time. It’s a game. It’s meant to be enjoyed. If you want to farm the hell out of a dungeon, you’re welcome to join the zerker DPS whatever. But that doesn’t have to define your dungeon experience if that’s not what you’re looking for.

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

That said, it’s the reason why I run PVT gear on my guardian for ‘harder’ dungeons like Arah and FotM 40+. If I want damage, I’d bring my zerker warrior along. If I want to make sure that we don’t wipe 20 times because one person in the party is made of paper and can’t dodge to save their lives – literally – then my PVT guardian draws aggro while the zerker whatevers can do their DPS.

I think Knights might be better for this Job BTW, the 4 things that draw agro are

*Proximity
*High Toughness
*Damage
*Low Vitality

So swapping out some of your Vitality for Precision will improve 2 of these 4 criteria. So things will stick to you even better.

Ratty.5176:

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

That said, it’s the reason why I run PVT gear on my guardian for ‘harder’ dungeons like Arah and FotM 40+. If I want damage, I’d bring my zerker warrior along. If I want to make sure that we don’t wipe 20 times because one person in the party is made of paper and can’t dodge to save their lives – literally – then my PVT guardian draws aggro while the zerker whatevers can do their DPS.

I think Knights might be better for this Job BTW, the 4 things that draw agro are

*Proximity
*High Toughness
*Damage
*Low Vitality

So swapping out some of your Vitality for Precision will improve 2 of these 4 criteria. So things will stick to you even better.

I find that it’s a lot easier to res people in PVT than in PPT though; occasionally if you want to swoop in and save someone downed while you’re still holding aggro, either aegis is on cooldown or your other blocks can’t absorb all the damage you’ll get. But I agree, outside of ‘harder’ dungeons PPT is great. I don’t see why OP has to bandwagon on the zerker train if he doesn’t want to.

Strange, whenever I’ve joined speed run pugs on gw2lfg, they’ve always, without fail been extremely competent since if you’re joining a speed run, you kind of understand that you have to know the tricks and be in DPS gear.