Guild Wars 2

I just recently a couple of months ago came back to the game after a very long break after hearing about Heart of Thorns and some friends who were already back into the game. I guess I missed out on the dark ages where there was no new content and all people did was learn how to break dungeons and the birth of the “zerk meta”. From what I understand for a while people deemed rangers and necromancers as useless classes for a while until the more recent multitude of changes that have shifted them to becoming “more viable”.

I don’t quite understand why people hate ranger though, I main as ranger, as well as my real life best friend, we run near identical LB/LS builds and do quite well for ourselves, we burned through all 50 levels of fractals in about 3 weeks doing anywhere from 2-7 fractals per night with, yes, 2 lb/ls rangers. I’m no noob to the MMO genre, I started out on original gw and moved on to other things back and forth; World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Aion, and now back to Guild Wars 2. I’m no stranger to complex raid mechanics and all those types of things. So I did not find anything within those 50 levels particularly mind mindbogglingly difficult. I understould full well what the intention was to counter the challenges the devs put before us. However every so often I find groups that outright refuse to accept rangers.

I’ll tell you a story from my most recent trip into a daily 50. They were already in stage 2(Ascalon) and I came in and everything was find starting out. This is a pug so I didn’t really expect these guys to be the greatest so when I see someone die to a meteor shower from a boss thats clearing telegraphing he’s aiming at him I’m not too surprised or kitten over it. So after 2 wipes we finally get him and move over to grawl. Everything goes well until we get to that last boss fight with the destroygrawlharpyshamanthing. Now mind you my friend and I have gone through this fight before without even a single down running our lb/ls builds and even managed to pull it off after our 3 pugs stood in the fire/meteorshower/whatevernastiness suiciding themselves. This group does just that and more, every attempt I’m left as the last individual and everyone is acting as if its my fault they are killing themselves. This fight, although a pain, is not one that is demanding on composition, rather personal initiative to identify you are in a bad spot and need to maneuver to where you are not going to die. I literally watched an engineer run him self, at full health, out into the lava and stand there and die to meteor showers, boss pokes, and the lava itself. He then proclaims that we need to replace the ranger to succeed. Another, a mesmer, would simply run up to the boss and get herself cleaved immediately at the start of the fight and die before we even got it to 95%. I could go on, but I’m sure you get the picture.

I feel like people have gotten themselves so deep into this zerker stack mentality that they can’t escape it. I’m sure for many players this is their first MMO experience and they have spent there entire time being brainwashed by this mentality to the point where they are litteraly incapable of thinking outside the box and realizing that certain encounters actually require real mechanics. That maybe the reason things arn’t going well isn’t because of some scrub broken class getting you killed, but because you just don’t know how to, or refuse to play the game the right way.

Maybe I’m the one who’s ignorant, there’s obviously no way I could have gotten all the way to scale 50 with not 1 but 2 rangers… oh wait… I did.

I welcome constructive input from intelligent individuals.

Because your typical pug ranger is:
>why I should use something other than LB
>why I should not use bear
>why I should not press LB4 every time when I see boss without defiance
>why I should stack
>what is Frost spirit
>what is Spotter
>haha party wipe and I’m still alive, that why I’m wear PVT, dumb zerker noobs

I will tell you why I don’t like rangers. Note that this is my view based on my overall experiences, other peoples may and does somewhat vary.

I should note that I play almost all professions at max level and I am a PvX player who plays all game modes on all of those professions, except ranger.

I had a ranger as well, but deleted it due to a wide plethora of frustrating pet issues and lack of condition cleansing and/or it being pet reliant.

In PvP, both WvW and SPVP, I find vast majority of rangers to be basically free kills in 1 vs 1 situations. This is extremely high, I will say as high as 90-95% range. The only exceptions to this are the non bow using rangers that give me a run for my money, and from time to time actually own me if their build happens to be a hard counter to mine. But these are extremely rare, as I said, around 95% of teh time they might as well just sit and let me kill and stomp them so they can respawn faster.

For that reason, because I can kill them with extreme ease on any of my professions, I do not like having them on my team, because any decent opponent will likewise kill them just as easily as I do. Therefore it is actually harmful instead of beneficial for a ranger to be on my team.

In dungeons, most rangers are basically as the guy above posted. the percentage of decent player rangers is higher then in PvP, maybe 40% ish or so, but the bad ones are still way too many and thus I avoid grouping with them whenever I can.

The good rangers in dungeons hold their own, do good DPS etc., but so do a lot of other professions, and those professions bring a ton more group utility while holding their own and doing same good DPS etc, then ranger.

yes there are situational exceptions on individual figths, but those are too few. Overall you get way more “bang for the buck” running anything other then ranger.

The only time I run with rangers, is when I know the player is good, and its a “sympathy carry” on my part, another words, I do not blame the player for A-Nets screw ups on this class. But I would much rather have anything besides a ranger in the slot, even a necro or condi mes is better for me to run with then ranger despite the lower DPS they are just far more useful on a wider variety of encounters and can make up what they lack on boss fights in other areas, for example mes can sneak whole party pass trash with real ease, etc.

How do you know the pugs were zerk? Did they demand gearcheck? They didnt kick you for being a ranger at the beginning so they were not the elitist type. Maybe the engie asked to kick you because you refused to die after the group wiped, it is quite annoying when that happens, the ranger is not going to solo the boss but still doesnt want to ooc.

Now every stupid thing that happens in pugs is because of zerk meta, it’s like if there was no zerk meta suddenly all communication problems most pugs have and other difficulties would just disappear if one stat combo was removed from the game.

I can understand that. However, when the community mentality has reached a point where I can’t get my group to listen to me for a plan to take something down, because of my class rather than my individual capacities with it, its just disheartening and says something about the developers in regards to their priorities when it comes to keeping their game closely balanced for the health of the community.

I could tell they were trying to buid a solid meta team and sacrificing me was a part of that. Anyway something else to to contribute to this is I only seem to encounter these types of issues in dungeon/fractals during the middle of the day, after say 6-8pm my groups end up becoming progressively more awesome. Food for thought?

many people range(boss fight) in fractal. So that’s not a big deal. And a bunch of people who probably should be ranging, judging by how they always die when they try meleeing.

For normal dungeon, it is a complete different story though. You usually don’t like see people ranging in normal dungeon.

I can honestly say, I dont’ really like bow rangers in normal dungeons, but for fractals I dont’ mind so much. I range very often myself regardless of the class I play.

I stopped reading at the part of dark age and people learn break dungeons… what was your question?

Did you seriously double post this? Hhhhnnn… /sigh

I’m still waiting for the question mark, what are we supposed to be responding to?

Problem is it’s a combination of bad play from both your perspective and theirs. Just because you were the last one to go down does not mean that you did a better job than they did, you need to understand that.

However, if they’re repeatedly wiping and blaming you that means they’re just idiots. Either way it’s really frustrating to see a ranger camping longbow. It’s not a weapon that helps groups… you need to understand that if you’re playing selfishly when your other teammates aren’t then that’s considered rude. Everybody around here these days knows your setup is suboptimal and it’s of course going to bother a lot of people.

That said, that doesn’t really excuse the elitism from pugs. I agree that pugs are pathetic for demanding 2 ele/1 thief/1 guard/1 warrior all the time and to be quite frank with you I never play with the people that post LFG ads asking for this because to me, those are just wannabes/tryhards. It’s not the best class comp all of the time, in fact it’s rare for it to be.

Why don’t you just do what I do and avoid groups exhibiting elitism? It’s a simple painless solution. You can’t force people to stop being stupid, you know.

Purple Miku.7032:

Problem is it’s a combination of bad play from both your perspective and theirs. Just because you were the last one to go down does not mean that you did a better job than they did, you need to understand that.

However, if they’re repeatedly wiping and blaming you that means they’re just idiots. Either way it’s really frustrating to see a ranger camping longbow. It’s not a weapon that helps groups… you need to understand that if you’re playing selfishly when your other teammates aren’t then that’s considered rude. Everybody around here these days knows your setup is suboptimal and it’s of course going to bother a lot of people.

That said, that doesn’t really excuse the elitism from pugs. I agree that pugs are pathetic for demanding 2 ele/1 thief/1 guard/1 warrior all the time and to be quite frank with you I never play with the people that post LFG ads asking for this because to me, those are just wannabes/tryhards. It’s not the best class comp all of the time, in fact it’s rare for it to be.

Why don’t you just do what I do and avoid groups exhibiting elitism? It’s a simple painless solution. You can’t force people to stop being stupid, you know.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Hate-Zerkmeta/first#post5475066 As always, you read my mind and say just what I think myself – just more eloquently and w/o making wall of texts. <3 MyKu
P.S. Please notice the different thread name, tho. That’s kinda.. yucky.

deSade.9437:

Purple Miku.7032:

Problem is it’s a combination of bad play from both your perspective and theirs. Just because you were the last one to go down does not mean that you did a better job than they did, you need to understand that.

However, if they’re repeatedly wiping and blaming you that means they’re just idiots. Either way it’s really frustrating to see a ranger camping longbow. It’s not a weapon that helps groups… you need to understand that if you’re playing selfishly when your other teammates aren’t then that’s considered rude. Everybody around here these days knows your setup is suboptimal and it’s of course going to bother a lot of people.

That said, that doesn’t really excuse the elitism from pugs. I agree that pugs are pathetic for demanding 2 ele/1 thief/1 guard/1 warrior all the time and to be quite frank with you I never play with the people that post LFG ads asking for this because to me, those are just wannabes/tryhards. It’s not the best class comp all of the time, in fact it’s rare for it to be.

Why don’t you just do what I do and avoid groups exhibiting elitism? It’s a simple painless solution. You can’t force people to stop being stupid, you know.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Hate-Zerkmeta/first#post5475066 As always, you read my mind and say just what I think myself – just more eloquently and w/o making wall of texts. <3 MyKu
P.S. Please notice the different thread name, tho. That’s kinda.. yucky.

I saw you mention the double post before. But I didn’t see anything for it in the general discussion forum. Which makes sense, if a person feels mistreated for playing a ranger where would be the best place to go for a shoulder to cry on? The Ranger Forums of course.

That said. There are many try-hards in this game. However sometimes they are right. Even I get frustrated when someone is camping range and playing it safe most of the fight when I am dancing around the boss with my little 12k hp pool.

And what Purple Miku said. Just because you are the last to go down doesn’t mean you are the best player. A person wearing PvT armor is gonna have a much easier time staying on their feet then a zerker who can only make one maybe two mistakes. That and some classes like Warrior have it alot easier in Zerker gear due to their larger HP pool.

Things to walk away from. Think before you join a group. Make sure you fit them and they fit you. This one simply thing can make everyone’s day easier, even the try-hards…

Not that we care about them.

“That said, that doesn’t really excuse the elitism from pugs. I agree that pugs are pathetic for demanding 2 ele/1 thief/1 guard/1 warrior all the time and to be quite frank with you I never play with the people that post LFG ads asking for this because to me, those are just wannabes/tryhards. It’s not the best class comp all of the time, in fact it’s rare for it to be.”

Care to elaborate? In my experience to ask for.this party composition is the safest bet… by far. Sure, experience is the most important thing, and I had amazing runs with wierd parties… is just a mattrr of probabilities

Less restrictive LFGs fill faster which reduces the total run time. More restrictive LFGs usually end up with better players which also reduces the rune time. Hard to say how restrictive is optimal. But I really doubt that “2 ele/1 thief/1 guard/1 warrior” is better than for example “ele/thief/guard/warrior/anything”.

Ryn.6459:

Care to elaborate? In my experience to ask for.this party composition is the safest bet… by far. Sure, experience is the most important thing, and I had amazing runs with wierd parties… is just a mattrr of probabilities

In fact, safest bet is still good old 5 hammer guardians party. 20-25min per 50 fractal and almost complete invulnerability in most cases. Pugs dropped them after symbol bug nerf, but composition still working.

Ryn.6459:

I stop reading at the part of dark age and people learn break dungeons… what was your question?

It’s stopped* reading if you are talking about the past tense.

Much appreciated Painbow.

Rednik.3809:

Ryn.6459:

Care to elaborate? In my experience to ask for.this party composition is the safest bet… by far. Sure, experience is the most important thing, and I had amazing runs with wierd parties… is just a mattrr of probabilities

In fact, safest bet is still good old 5 hammer guardians party. 20-25min per 50 fractal and almost complete invulnerability in most cases. Pugs dropped them after symbol bug nerf, but composition still working.

That was pretty fun XD. I’d like to try a 5 ele composition tho.

Ryn.6459:

Rednik.3809:

Ryn.6459:

Care to elaborate? In my experience to ask for.this party composition is the safest bet… by far. Sure, experience is the most important thing, and I had amazing runs with wierd parties… is just a mattrr of probabilities

In fact, safest bet is still good old 5 hammer guardians party. 20-25min per 50 fractal and almost complete invulnerability in most cases. Pugs dropped them after symbol bug nerf, but composition still working.

That was pretty fun XD. I’d like to try a 5 ele composition tho.

Did 5 Necro not long ago with half the group not really knowing how to play their necro (bunch of people who got the chars but never really played) Finished in !45 mins with a nice smoothish run ( I summoned them all to their deaths at Mai Trin :b)

Surprising how easy it was.

Purple Miku.7032:

That said, that doesn’t really excuse the elitism from pugs. I agree that pugs are pathetic for demanding 2 ele/1 thief/1 guard/1 warrior all the time and to be quite frank with you I never play with the people that post LFG ads asking for this because to me, those are just wannabes/tryhards. It’s not the best class comp all of the time, in fact it’s rare for it to be.

Not all are wannabe/tryhards. There are some, indeed, but i’ve met a new group of buddies in a pug group with this kind of setup. We had one tryhard thief, but that’s one out of 5.

I personnaly always ask for this kind of setup and a decent experience in PUG (because i like it, it’s an efficient in every situation, maybe not always optimal, but it’s not a speed run, it’s a fast run pug), but i don’t expect them to go perfect without mistake, and they might be used to different tactics than me and that could lead to a wipe or two. I won’t kitten over it, as i make mistakes too, and miscommunication involve everyone.

Jerus.4350:

Ryn.6459:

Rednik.3809:

Ryn.6459:

Care to elaborate? In my experience to ask for.this party composition is the safest bet… by far. Sure, experience is the most important thing, and I had amazing runs with wierd parties… is just a mattrr of probabilities

In fact, safest bet is still good old 5 hammer guardians party. 20-25min per 50 fractal and almost complete invulnerability in most cases. Pugs dropped them after symbol bug nerf, but composition still working.

That was pretty fun XD. I’d like to try a 5 ele composition tho.

Did 5 Necro not long ago with half the group not really knowing how to play their necro (bunch of people who got the chars but never really played) Finished in !45 mins with a nice smoothish run ( I summoned them all to their deaths at Mai Trin :b)

Surprising how easy it was.

I am also up for a 5 engi run ^^… get an EU account !

Kordash.2197:

Purple Miku.7032:

That said, that doesn’t really excuse the elitism from pugs. I agree that pugs are pathetic for demanding 2 ele/1 thief/1 guard/1 warrior all the time and to be quite frank with you I never play with the people that post LFG ads asking for this because to me, those are just wannabes/tryhards. It’s not the best class comp all of the time, in fact it’s rare for it to be.

Not all are wannabe/tryhards. There are some, indeed, but i’ve met a new group of buddies in a pug group with this kind of setup. We had one tryhard thief, but that’s one out of 5.

I personnaly always ask for this kind of setup and a decent experience in PUG (because i like it, it’s an efficient in every situation, maybe not always optimal, but it’s not a speed run, it’s a fast run pug), but i don’t expect them to go perfect without mistake, and they might be used to different tactics than me and that could lead to a wipe or two. I won’t kitten over it, as i make mistakes too, and miscommunication involve everyone.

Yup. I too usually ask for a specific class and kick anyone not meeting the criteria. This has nothing to do with tryharding, I’m simply testing people’s basic perceptive abilities. While it’s true that pretty much every dungeon can be completed with any class composition (and when people are competent, the time difference is not even that big), I don’t really wanna run with someone who can’t be even bothered to read and instantly joins random parties in the lfg. Bad people with good builds are still better than bad people with bad builds, hence why I ask for meta setups.
In the end class obviously doesn’t matter much, what matters is people’s abilities to read and do what you say.
But yeah, I agree that in some cases it’s just tryharding that doesn’t make sense. PUGs have been blindly following the meta for years, that’s nothing new.

As for the OP’s question, it has been already answered above. While there are good rangers out there (as well as necros), people are used to seeing fullsignet bearbow noobs who knock enemies out of your AoEs as soon as the fight starts. It’s not your fault, but I’m afraid there’s nothing that can be done about it. Either run with friends, or get used to the hate.

By the way… can anyone explain to me what does lb/ls ranger mean? Does he by any chance mean longsword aka greatsword? Or is he refering to some utility setup? Haven’t checked out ranger meta in a while, last I remember was lb/s+a for power ranger.

My first main is a Necromancer, and I’ll be honest: If you read the LFG and join LFGs that don’t mention class restrictions, you will find plenty of good, skilled, non-discriminating groups. I literally never make my own group because I have social anxiety and hate doing things like that, and always find parties willing to take me to Fractals 50 and any dungeon path. My strategy follows.

• Does the LFG say no Necros or Rangers? If so, don’t join them because I don’t want to deal with those people.
• Is there another Necro in group? If so, don’t join them because I can’t guarantee that the other Necro is even half as good as I am.
• If the above two criteria are met, join group and ping ascended. Most people will look at my AP and assume I’m some kind of God walking amongst mere mortals anyway even though it’s completely irrelevant.
• Have a good run at about 120-130% record run time.
• Get surprised remarks by meta players about how well I performed at the end of whatever we’re doing.

That’s how it goes 99% of the time without fail. If you’re seriously getting discriminated against in the middle of runs I guarantee it’s because you’re doing something wrong without realizing it or joining the wrong groups. Sitting at max distance with a LB, not stacking appropriately, letting your pet go kitten off extra mobs, or something like that. It doesn’t matter if your LB DPS is pretty darned good or not at max range, you’re not boon/buff sharing so get in melee. The only case where ranging makes sense in pubs is on Archdiviner and Legendary Grawl and really bad GL kills, and even then as a Ranger you have some awesome options to make people love you (seriously, I’ve saved lives with OH Axe 5).

Now of course a lot of this is because I love how a Necro/Ranger play and it’s fun for keeping the game fresh. It’s also a lot simpler on other classes, but who cares? Really, you can play what you want, still be a really good player, and all you have to do is manage your expectations appropriately and find the right groups.

There will always be a worst class in some format, period. That’s okay, really.

Tarasicodissa.7084:

By the way… can anyone explain to me what does lb/ls ranger mean? Does he by any chance mean longsword aka greatsword? Or is he refering to some utility setup? Haven’t checked out ranger meta in a while, last I remember was lb/s+a for power ranger.

You’re almost assuredly correct that he means LB/GS.

Regarding the OP, I don’t feel that this is strictly related to the zerk meta, but rather a lack of experience and/or competence. When things go wrong, people are quick to blame it on something other than admitting their own mistakes. In regards to class composition, this means that those suffering from a lot of prejudice (such as ranger and necro) will likely get blamed before one that is considered “meta” (ele or guard).

In your specific case, you gave them the opening (excuse) they needed through your lb-setup. The effectiveness of that setup has been covered elsewhere and is nothing I wish to address in my post as such.

That said, I wholeheartedly agree with Miku’s post about not joining those “meta-zerk-composition” groups. While I understand the desire for smooth PUG-runs, I do not wish to participate in such a level of class discrimination. Luckily, I have no problems finding competent groups through other ways. I can only add that the mentioned group-composition is by no means required to complete the current instanced content and we often take different picks in our organized guild-runs, which I’m sure make for a better completion time compared to the average tryhard pug run.

Tarasicodissa.7084:

Yup. I too usually ask for a specific class and kick anyone not meeting the criteria. This has nothing to do with tryharding, I’m simply testing people’s basic perceptive abilities. While it’s true that pretty much every dungeon can be completed with any class composition (and when people are competent, the time difference is not even that big), I don’t really wanna run with someone who can’t be even bothered to read and instantly joins random parties in the lfg. Bad people with good builds are still better than bad people with bad builds, hence why I ask for meta setups.
In the end class obviously doesn’t matter much, what matters is people’s abilities to read and do what you say.

Convenient excuse, considering you could add something as simple as pinging a certain part of equipment or whatever in order to check for a players basic perceptive ability. In my experience, a bad player with a good build (aka a meta-build he blindly copied) offers zero advantages, on the contrary, the class-canon nature of many such builds heavily punish lack of skill or coordination in a group. Personally, I would take an average player with an average build who follows directions over a wannabe meta-zerk anytime. But most important of all, I wish people would stop poisoning the lfg-system with class-discrimination.

Rising Dusk.2408:

• Does the LFG say no Necros or Rangers? If so, don’t join them because I don’t want to deal with those people.
• Is there another Necro in group? If so, don’t join them because I can’t guarantee that the other Necro is even half as good as I am.
• If the above two criteria are met, join group and ping ascended. Most people will look at my AP and assume I’m some kind of God walking amongst mere mortals anyway even though it’s completely irrelevant.

Not really complete list, because LFG also may say “meta” or even strict list of classes (“guard, PS war, 2 staff eles, thief” as example). In those cases, ranger and necro would be clearly off list too.

Rednik.3809:

Not really complete list, because LFG also may say “meta” or even strict list of classes (“guard, PS war, 2 staff eles, thief” as example). In those cases, ranger and necro would be clearly off list too.

Strictly listing classes is essentially the same as saying no Necro/Ranger. Also, I join “meta” groups all of the time and 9 times out of 10 they’re asking for meta builds, not a meta team comp. In that case they allow me as a Necro or Ranger so long as I’m not running something terrible like cleric’s Minionmancer. If they want a meta team comp that 1 time out of 10, they will oftentimes change their LFG to be more clear.

Satenia.9025:

Personally, I would take an average player with an average build who follows directions over a wannabe meta-zerk anytime. But most important of all, I wish people would stop poisoning the lfg-system with class-discrimination.

Because asking for a particular setup is poisining. Yeah, sure. So, you’d prefer a LFG without any description ? So that people with different mindset and objectives are mixed together ? And you think that it will end well ?

If they don’t want something, they’re free to state it. I prefer someone who says the truth frankly, rather than saying “We do path XXX” and kick because you don’t meet a requirement that was stated nowhere.

Why can’t people just ignore what doesn’t work for them when it DOES NOT affect them in any way ?

And PLEASE, do not label people that doesn’t want to run with a particular setup as “tryhards” or “meta wannabe”. I hate the tryhards aswell, but assuminng that every one asking for a meta setup and gearchecking in the LFG is one is just PLAIN WRONG and stupid.

Kordash.2197:

Because asking for a particular setup is poisining. Yeah, sure. So, you’d prefer a LFG without any description ? So that people with different mindset and objectives are mixed together ? And you think that it will end well ?

Of course not – these are entirely your own conclusions. When using the lfg-system, a proper description is fundamental to team-building. Personally, I fancy a whole lot of requirements regarding level, experience and gear. However, class-discrimination – the thing I was actually talking about – has no room there.

This whole meta-group-composition (1x guard, 1x thief, 1x warr, 2x ele) disaster results in unnecessary exclusion of viable classes as much as it forces players into roles they poorly fill in order to get a group. This is the kind of information worth spreading, so players know and understand that these limitations are a result of the community and not actually a game-related requirement.

Satenia.9025:

Kordash.2197:

Because asking for a particular setup is poisining. Yeah, sure. So, you’d prefer a LFG without any description ? So that people with different mindset and objectives are mixed together ? And you think that it will end well ?

This whole meta-group-composition (1x guard, 1x thief, 1x warr, 2x ele) disaster results in unnecessary exclusion of viable classes as much as it forces players into roles they poorly fill in order to get a group. This is the kind of information worth spreading, so players know and understand that these limitations are a result of the community and not actually a game-related requirement.

Well, it’s all about playing how you want. If you want to exclude a certain class from your group, whatever reason (good or bad reason, doesn’t matter), that’s up to you, and that’s not a problem if people want to do it.

However, people not understanding that everything in this game is viable is another matter that have nothing to do with the LFG, but is rather misinformation spread by misinformed people.

The 1 class that i avoid like the plahue in pugs are thieves. 90% of them are shortbow camping which means they do no damage.

tldr; someone had a bad experience pugging.

NikeEU.7690:

tldr; someone had a bad experience pugging.

Sums it up quite well I guess. Spiced with an unreflected mixture of lfg-rant and zerker-root-of-all-evil-rant.

Everything else to be said was already done by Rising Dusk- respect the lfg and manage your expectations.
Whenever I set up a “relaxed after work fotm lvl xx, swamp rdy” lfg or sth. alike, at least 9 out of 10 runs are super smooth with great people.

Ryn.6459:

Jerus.4350:

Ryn.6459:

Rednik.3809:

Ryn.6459:

Care to elaborate? In my experience to ask for.this party composition is the safest bet… by far. Sure, experience is the most important thing, and I had amazing runs with wierd parties… is just a mattrr of probabilities

In fact, safest bet is still good old 5 hammer guardians party. 20-25min per 50 fractal and almost complete invulnerability in most cases. Pugs dropped them after symbol bug nerf, but composition still working.

That was pretty fun XD. I’d like to try a 5 ele composition tho.

Did 5 Necro not long ago with half the group not really knowing how to play their necro (bunch of people who got the chars but never really played) Finished in !45 mins with a nice smoothish run ( I summoned them all to their deaths at Mai Trin :b)

Surprising how easy it was.

I am also up for a 5 engi run ^^… get an EU account !

:D was thinking about building one up with the f2p, but one of those things that I want to do but never have time for and all that.

Sarahfull and I have been wanting to do this for a while, but again, want to, never have time >.<

Couple of my friends have been keeping me busy for the time I can actually play which is always good, but also a little troublesome not that I’m complaining.

EcoRI.9273:

The 1 class that i avoid like the plahue in pugs are thieves. 90% of them are shortbow camping which means they do no damage.

I found this thief in arah p3 trio, the lfg wasn’t filling and I ended up duoing most of the path with an engi. Just pew pew, no blasts, couple smokescreens and 1 SR.

I used to not restrict classes on LFG, i used to not be elitist on LFG, but after so much headaches this is what happened, what i do and why:

I got millions of times frustrated because PEOPLE THAT DONT READ OR COMUNICATE EVER, Fear spaming necros and LB 4 spamming rangers, you wanna play non-meta Necro? its ok 4 me, PLEASE DONT SPAM FEAR, and rangers, PLEASE, dont camp long bow 1200 range away and spam 4, mainly if there is a phalanx warrior, get in the might-sharing range PLEASE.

Now i always ask for “Pro Zerk X or Y or Z Only”

Why? Because this way i know the pug at least read LFG/Chat.

Lots of times people pm-me, i dont have a elementalist, i have a engineer, may i join? I say yes, because this prove they did read…..

I have lots of ranger/Necro friends i like doing stuff with, but unfortunately in all my experience, 95% Necro/Ranger pugs spam fear, camp LongBow and spam the 4 LB skill.

In GW2 all classes have good roles/utilitys and decent DPS.

There are Staff only guardians on LFG? yes
There are ShortBow only Thiefs on LFG? yes
no Kits engineers? yes
etc etc etc

But in my experience except for Necro/Rangers that 95% of my experience where this bad, only 20% of the times other classes are at this level of badness.

And it was not your fault, don’t matter what you did, 4 people should be able to kill fire elemental easily

Class-ism is the flavor of the month. Just another chapter in the wonderful world of internet hate. We all would do well to steer clear of these people, online and off.

Find a group you like and make them your friends I say, the LFG becomes irrelevant.

Thank you OP for posting something that’s been on my mind for a long time, and explaining it in such a great way too. It’s just a shame some people have predictably ignored what you’re saying.
I’m thankful that I have a guild to run 50s with, because the amount of tryhard elitists I see in LFG for that fractal tier is ridiculous. They all post “need 1 war ps 2 ele 1 guard 1 teef” and its just so silly to see. You don’t -need- that setup. You don’t -need- to stack at a certain spot or exploit.
People just don’t understand that they’ll finish their run fine with a necro or ranger or whatever else, and when they don’t, I can’t help but laugh because it just shows they don’t actually know anything about playing the game, only stack in this corner, stack might, pull boss and ice bow kitten mode. It’s really very pathetic.

What irks me the most is being blamed for something you didn’t do. When I am on my Ranger and a kitten mesmer or engi or whatever else that can knock back, uses that skill…it’s always the Ranger that gets blamed. Even if the Ranger is holding their sword/axe or greatsword. I was on mine, joined a PUG for a quick dungeon run for gold and I didn’t even HAVE a LB equipped at all the whole time (I usually have my GS and Sword/Axe going) but that kitten mesmer kept using their GS5 skill and I got yelled at. I was like WTF have you even seen me using any LB skills? Have you not seen my GS’s Maul AND the Sword’s Snake animations going off during fights??? Ugh…can’t stand people who hate a profession just because it’s the ‘cool kid’ thing to do right now.

Rangers do not suck…players suck -.-

Totally, and I will admit most of the time if there’s a weird knockback, it was me forgetting turret detonate now has it or trying to swap and hit a freeze grenade but i lag and it ends up an overcharged shot, or just my fingers failing and accidently dropping a BoB then… doh… hell even doing it on purpose thinking “there’s defiance, I can get a blast and strip a stack yay” only to have someone else strip it between my activation and the explosion…. so many ways to screw it up on engi

Thief isn’t even best to take for a lot of the fractals, yet that doesn’t stop pugs from demanding them all the time for pretty much no reason.

This is the kind of bullkitten I meant when I said 2 ele/1 warr/1 guard/1 thief is not best:

Sometimes it would legitimately be more useful to take a third ele or an engi and sometimes guard is pointless. Mesmer has the potential to be better a lot of the time anyways.

If you’re playing with people that are good players, then you won’t notice a tremendous difference in speed when people swap to classes like necro/ranger for the hell of it. If you need specific utilities to make a run smooth then that’s another story, but sometimes a fractal/dungeon doesn’t need anything. So what gives? Why are people always taking 2 ele/1 guard/1 warr/1 thief?

The answer is because they’re misinformed. They don’t know any better.

And as far as pugs are concerned, picking guard/warr/ele/thief all the time doesn’t guarantee good runs. Just because someone plays a staff ele with fire/air/water and equips glyph of storms and ice bow doesn’t mean they will be good. 99% of the time I see eles never swap traits, even in records let alone pugs, and never swap to arcane even though it sometimes actually is better damage. Same applies to all other classes, if you aren’t constantly taking advantage of being OOC and trying to be efficient on a micro level then what guarantees that you’re doing better than a potential ranger or necro who is actually min/maxing?

Basically the point is, you can’t guarantee fast runs by being elitist on the LFG because you’re playing with strangers. That said, I know right away when I see people being super elitist with their LFG ads that it’s just not going to be fun. I’m going to most likely be paired up with people that think they’re super cool and whine whenever somebody doesn’t conform to their standards. So much of the time these standards are only revolved around gear rather than skill, which is obnoxious to the point where I don’t want to be around them.

And as Wethospu’s stated several times on both reddit and the forums, waiting around until people pick the exact classes you want is more often than not a lot slower than just beginning with whatever you get.

The good thing of asking for 2ele, guard, war and thief is that everyone tends to know his role. It may be not optimal for all fractals, sure, but at utility level:
- a thief probably will manage defiant, blind and stealth you.
- guardian probably will give you aegis and stab at the right time, also reflects.
-war will give you might and banners.
-eles will provide ice bow and proper use of glyphs.
and all of these always helps, no matter the fractal.

As I love engis, is not rare that I asked for 2 ele, war, guard and thief/engi… The difference is abysmal. No smoke fields, no defiant managment, no blinds etc etc.. To find a good engi is very very hard.

Again, a matter of probablities…. 2ele, guard, war and thief is the safest bet, by far.

Ironically, this is the version I often see in Pug:
- A Thief exhausts all of his initiatives to spam pistol whip because he cannot survive and deal damage (seriously?) without it. Defiant Management means they will stay P/P and camp headshot then call it a day.
- A Guardian uses aegis selfishly and blatantly ignores the warrior next to him with 6 bleed stacks, 4 Burning stacks, 8 Vulnerability and 2 Confusion. Also the random Empower and flying orbs for flavors?
- A War camps long bow 80% of the time because let’s face it, it takes a PvE God to melee a boss in fractal with gsword (/s). Or when they do, they don’t dodge the obviously big attack and blame it to lag, bug, or BS. More notably, they would suggest to burn the last boss in the Dredge fractal with one bucket but proceed to camp longbow anyways!
- An Ele drops the ice bow, confidently runs next to the boss, unleash Ice Storm, then Volley, and then… Deep Freeze. What gives?!! Said ele also has the balls to tell people to stop melee the boss because apparently her Fire Ball damage is far more superior and it’s more important to walk the boss to a next bucket than actually trying to burn it.

To be honest, if someone has the gut to play Necro, Ranger or Engineer in my Fractal pug, I will take them more seriously than those people who join with a meta class and tell me to “chill, I know what to do in this game” when facing my questions.

You mean like our p/p teef, our lb warrior and our perma downed ele (I really hope he at least had it traited) in that fractal? What a meta party, huh?

Iris Ng.9845:

Ironically, this is the version I often see in Pug:
- A Thief exhausts all of his initiatives to spam pistol whip because he cannot survive and deal damage (seriously?) without it. Defiant Management means they will stay P/P and camp headshot then call it a day.
- A Guardian uses aegis selfishly and blatantly ignores the warrior next to him with 6 bleed stacks, 4 Burning stacks, 8 Vulnerability and 2 Confusion. Also the random Empower and flying orbs for flavors?
- A War camps long bow 80% of the time because let’s face it, it takes a PvE God to melee a boss in fractal with gsword (/s). Or when they do, they don’t dodge the obviously big attack and blame it to lag, bug, or BS. More notably, they would suggest to burn the last boss in the Dredge fractal with one bucket but proceed to camp longbow anyways!
- An Ele drops the ice bow, confidently runs next to the boss, unleash Ice Storm, then Volley, and then… Deep Freeze. What gives?!! Said ele also has the balls to tell people to stop melee the boss because apparently her Fire Ball damage is far more superior and it’s more important to walk the boss to a next bucket than actually trying to burn it.

To be honest, if someone has the gut to play Necro, Ranger or Engineer in my Fractal pug, I will take them more seriously than those people who join with a meta class and tell me to “chill, I know what to do in this game” when facing my questions.

I hardly see that on lv 40 and 50. Anyway, nothing more to add here. There are bads pug and good pug, and with this party composition I tend to have smoother runs. As I said, a matter of probabilites.

laokoko.7403:

And the expectation that a pug can 1 bucket burn dredge boss? Seriously how often does that happen? Maybe 1 in 10 runs? that is too high expectation on a pug.

I’m doing it 9 times out of 10 runs (when we roll the dredge facility obviously) in pugs (meaning i’m alone, with no buddies/guildies/friends in the party). Asking for meta party and gear checking. Works well. I even teach that to whoever want to learn it.

It all comes down to personnal experience, so we could go on this topic for hours, that won’t be usefull

Kordash.2197:

laokoko.7403:

And the expectation that a pug can 1 bucket burn dredge boss? Seriously how often does that happen? Maybe 1 in 10 runs? that is too high expectation on a pug.

I’m doing it 9 times out of 10 runs (when we roll the dredge facility obviously) in pugs (meaning i’m alone, with no buddies/guildies/friends in the party). Asking for meta party and gear checking. Works well. I even teach that to whoever want to learn it.

It all comes down to personnal experience, so we could go on this topic for hours, that won’t be usefull

So you going to teach every pug you do? Kind of pointless. Did every pug you do run fractal in 30-40 minutes?

Average pug do it in 40-50 mintues anyway.

laokoko.7403:

Kordash.2197:

laokoko.7403:

And the expectation that a pug can 1 bucket burn dredge boss? Seriously how often does that happen? Maybe 1 in 10 runs? that is too high expectation on a pug.

I’m doing it 9 times out of 10 runs (when we roll the dredge facility obviously) in pugs (meaning i’m alone, with no buddies/guildies/friends in the party). Asking for meta party and gear checking. Works well. I even teach that to whoever want to learn it.

It all comes down to personnal experience, so we could go on this topic for hours, that won’t be usefull

So you going to teach every pug you do? Kind of pointless. Did every pug you do run fractal in 30-40 minutes?

Average pug do it in 40-50 mintues anyway.

Average is 40 minutes, with the worst case being 55/1 hour. Strangely, i got my worst run times with guildies, but mostly because we’re running around like headless chickens doing kitten. And yes, if they’re listening and up to learn something new (for them), i’ll teach them. If it doesn’t work first try, the second always works. It’s not pointless, since it helps improving the global skill level (and it’s good for everyone).

Kordash.2197:

laokoko.7403:

Kordash.2197:

laokoko.7403:

And the expectation that a pug can 1 bucket burn dredge boss? Seriously how often does that happen? Maybe 1 in 10 runs? that is too high expectation on a pug.

I’m doing it 9 times out of 10 runs (when we roll the dredge facility obviously) in pugs (meaning i’m alone, with no buddies/guildies/friends in the party). Asking for meta party and gear checking. Works well. I even teach that to whoever want to learn it.

It all comes down to personnal experience, so we could go on this topic for hours, that won’t be usefull

So you going to teach every pug you do? Kind of pointless. Did every pug you do run fractal in 30-40 minutes?

Average pug do it in 40-50 mintues anyway.

Average is 40 minutes, with the worst case being 55/1 hour. Strangely, i got my worst run times with guildies, but mostly because we’re running around like headless chickens doing kitten. And yes, if they’re listening and up to learn something new (for them), i’ll teach them. If it doesn’t work first try, the second always works. It’s not pointless, since it helps improving the global skill level (and it’s good for everyone).

Fractal pretty much become the new cof path 1. Anyone still doing it is usually quite experience.

Many people(guidie) play together for the social experience. They are not actually your experienced fractal player.

Elitism is actually quite annoying. I don’t mind elitist player which is good blaming people. Like someone says “oh why don’t you put your ice bow near me”.

But the elitist player who blame other people for their own death is really annoying. “Oh I die because you didn’t aegis or condition removal for me”. That is one of the most annoying thing I ever heard. You can pretty much do fractal solo or duo. How is your own death have anything to do with other people.