Guild Wars 2

Im not even an elitist the PVT thing its just to say that CoF is already a faceroll without gear .. with that extra armor and hp you could afk and Watch tv …

I have 6.7k AP and have not set foot in any of the regular dungeons in this game.

I have moved around in the fractals once or twice but that is the entirety of my dungeon experience in this game.

AP in GW2 might tell a story but it might not be the story you expect.

lol people thought it meant something.

Zacchary.6183:

Make elitism reportable.
Watch the suspensions.

/problemsolved

I find aggressive anti-elitism about as insufferable as elitism.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

The Boz.2038:

Mobs prioritize high thoughness builds.

No they don’t. People need to stop spreading this garbage. Almost every mob has different aggro priorities, and even then different skills on each of those mobs will prioritize different conditionals.

There’s a reason why no good teams run an Anchor anymore, let alone AH (in any dungeon).

Yup as far as I know its random, back in GW1 in the later years mobs were programmed to charge people with LESS armor such as monks to add more pressure into the game. So I can understand the confusion of the possibility.

You needed proof for that? AP in this game are basically Paragon levels in Diablo. Numerical value that represents a colossal time-sink, not in any way related to skill level.

The Boz.2038:

Mobs prioritize high thoughness builds.

That’s only true to the first 2 seconds of the fight, but once your team starts DPSing, the aggro table becomes unpredictable, although it is recognizable to see who gets the aggro. In a zerg situation, good luck keeping track on who got aggro.

@OP
I have 6.5K AP and I’ve never been to CoF, nor I would want to go.

I definitely notice it on my characters when doing group events, it is definitely a factor. However, being a factor does not mean it is the only factor.

a t s e.9614:

So yeah i dont care about people farming AP all day long with the living story but i mean seriously … it dosent means much , it only means you played longer than the others.

Of course it doesn’t mean anything. For anyone that actually thought a little about how that system is constructed it should have been obvious from day one.

While achievement points don’t take skill to run up. It means you have be playing the game longer, are more experienced with the game mechanics, familiar with the dungeons, using more efficient builds. While AP don’t matter themselves. Its easy to predict how faster and smooth a dungeon clear will go with veterans with moderate to high AP versus noobs with less 2.5k AP.
Personally I play dungeons with the noobs. I play the game mostly just for the fun of it, not to farm anything. The dungeons save ARaH and a few random paths are far to easy. Playing with noobs add some much needed challenge, as it impossible to fail almost all dungeons. The worst that can happen it that you add an extra 5-15 mins to the run.

a t s e.9614:

Im not even an elitist the PVT thing its just to say that CoF is already a faceroll without gear .. with that extra armor and hp you could afk and Watch tv …

Oh that sounds like as much of a challenge as run as speed running CoF p1

… oh wait , sorry …

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

The Boz.2038:

Mobs prioritize high thoughness builds.

No they don’t. People need to stop spreading this garbage. Almost every mob has different aggro priorities, and even then different skills on each of those mobs will prioritize different conditionals.

There’s a reason why no good teams run an Anchor anymore, let alone AH (in any dungeon).

Yes actually, they do, I’ve confirmed it way too many times.

Cottage Pie.6215:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

The Boz.2038:

Mobs prioritize high thoughness builds.

No they don’t. People need to stop spreading this garbage. Almost every mob has different aggro priorities, and even then different skills on each of those mobs will prioritize different conditionals.

There’s a reason why no good teams run an Anchor anymore, let alone AH (in any dungeon).

Yes actually, they do, I’ve confirmed it way too many times.

I… Don’t see where you have done this. Granted, I didn’t go -that- deep into your post history.

Mob aggro works like this:

1) Ranger with a pet
2) Ranger without a pet
3) Anyone that looks like a Ranger
4) Anyone with a pet
5) Bounce around randomly until a Ranger shows up

kishter.9578:

every bad guardian in FOTM 40+ runs with hight vitality and good survavility build you know, to support the party! except this one yesterday he was running full zerker 30/30/10/0/0. whit GS. I just wanted to kill myself.

Seen people refuse to acknowledge they rolls and they limits in groups.

edit: i forget, He was 9k+ AP.

FTFY

The Boz.2038:

Mobs prioritize high thoughness builds.

I feel that pain by having 22k hp and 3.5k+ armor :S, on wvw Camp NPC’s always want to hug me by force!

The moral of the story is elitists are stupid for using AP as a basis of skill, which makes no sense because I could accrue 10k AP just doing dailies and jumping puzzles and never stepping foot in a dungeon.

At least in WoW people would check “gearscore” to see, but it at least made sense because how did you get a high enough gearscore to deem worthy? By already having done said dungeons/raids to get that high item level gear.

At the end of the day, AP nor Gearscore=Skill and you should probably look for dungeon masters for smooth runs but even that can be rough because they may have been carried through the dungeon by guildies, or they are just having an off day or memory of fights has faded since then. I know I haven’t ran a dungeon since finishing all paths of explorable for each dungeon.

FotM 26 here, 3600 AP………just sayin

FotM 0 here, 4200 AP

Im one of elitists, who uses “lf3m cm 4k+ achiv /join”

U know why? Cause it works. Even worst of 4k+ achiv pugs are way better, than some 3k- pugs. Yes. Even if it is their 1-st run – they know game good enough to teach them this dungeon.

I don’t mean to bash the game, but none of the instances really require skill.

As a first timer in Arah in an experienced group, I didn’t hold them back, partially because I had some raid experience in WoW where a lot more coordination was required in some instances.

Not to say that the challenges in WoW were based on individual skill, but getting the aggregate to do what was needed in the right amount of time. It always put the onus on one individual, who was usually quite petulant and abrasive, to coordinate everything, meaning that the brain work was left to him/her entirely while the rest of the raid merely functioned like ants and could have easily been replaced by bots.

The aforementioned coordination and research involved for the leader was the true skill in WoW, but as a percentage of population they were necessarily few and far.

I would have though that given GW2s mechanics that the elitism would have died out associated with achievements (still a relatively new construct that holds no meaning to a lot of older players) and “rank”, but… people are the same now as they were 10-20 years ago, or even 1000’s of years ago.

It’s basically the same as standardized testing. Is it a great tool for testing what we know? Not really, but it’s the best we have available to generalize at a glance. The main question here is: “What can we use to gauge a player’s ability at a glance?” Armor? Weapons? or AP? Armor and weapons are situational. They may show specific experience if they are of a dungeon or of Fotm. The majority however have nothing to do with player ability or knowledge, thus the reliance on AP.

The fact that you needed confirmation that AP means little when it comes to player skill betrays a deep ignorance of both game mechanic’s and the meaning of AP.

AP means you’ve put work into the game. Whether you’ve learned from it or not is an entirely different issue.

That said, if you don’t know someone, odds are the guy that put more time and effort into the game knows it better than the one that invested less.

I just got my 5,000 AP chest the other day and I’ve never stepped into any proper dungeon. Well, I have done a few fractals and the Wintersday toy factory, but that’s all.

I’m trying to picture people who find challenge here playing through Dark Souls… A+ “Let’s play” material.

Insignya.8625:

I’m trying to picture people who find challenge here playing through Dark Souls… A+ “Let’s play” material.

And then u was roflstomped in a duel. Sad story bro.

#Sergoros It’s impossible for me to get roflstomped in a duel because I play (used to play) Thief. The game mechanics are broken, that’s why companies usually do extensive tests on the core systems before shipping the game.

Insignya.8625:

#Sergoros It’s impossible for me to get roflstomped in a duel because I play (used to play) Thief. The game mechanics are broken, that’s why companies usually do extensive tests on the core systems before shipping the game.

Thiefs fall just as good as any other class. U just have to face good opponent ^^

And there you would find challenge. That was my point. Im quite a hardcore gamer and like challenging content. And in gw2 I meet challenge everyday. Spvp, www and even pve. Want to make dungeon hard? Go there with 4 guys with 1k- achivements.

Also, I love game mechanics in this game. They have trouble with balancing it all, but still. Fight in this game feels alive. Unlike wow and others like that.

I almost have 8k AP. Does that make me a good dungeon/fractal runner? No, because I stopped doing them a long time ago. I have been playing for a year and I’m not really interested in dungeons anymore. I used to run Fractals at least 2 times a day for 2 months, after getting all the skins I wanted I stopped. If I decide to run them again for the new fractal, you can bet I’ll jump in at 18 ~ 24 instead of 38 ~ 44. I’m practically a noob again

Just my 2 cents.

Tower Guard.5263:

I almost have 8k AP. Does that make me a good dungeon/fractal runner? No, because I stopped doing them a long time ago. I have been playing for a year and I’m not really interested in dungeons anymore. I used to run Fractals at least 2 times a day for 2 months, after getting all the skins I wanted I stopped. If I decide to run them again for the new fractal, you can bet I’ll jump in at 18 ~ 24 instead of 38 ~ 44. I’m practically a noob again

Just my 2 cents.

And u would be way better noob, than guy with 3k achiv.

Yes. U might make mistakes. But u would learn from them and do better. low ap guys, likely, dont even have understanding of their own class.

Peetee.9406:

Mob aggro works like this:

1) Ranger with a pet
2) Ranger without a pet
3) Anyone that looks like a Ranger
4) Anyone with a pet
5) Bounce around randomly until a Ranger shows up

Man I wish this worked for me! When I’m in a party that’s familiar with each other (ie. guild members or members of guilds we’re linked with) I tend to kite bosses if the need arises. This is usually when everyone else is dead and I’m debating whether to solo or just get ooc, but other times because of Anet’s favourite ‘boss has invuln shield, go here to remove said shield, spam dps’ mechanics. The worst being the dreaded Ghost Eater and I have to make people stay well out of its aggro range to kite it round pillars when the rest of the group is filling the traps.

A note on AP…I only go by under the 1k mark as meaning anything to do with a players skill the rest to me is irrelevant. If they have 540 AP then the player will have questions, they won’t be optimised and they probably think that dungeons are an extension of the personal story and thus soloable on the first try. Anything above 4k and I’m generally more likely to assume that they won’t take off their commander tag in a dungeon where it’s not necessary to keep it on, will be far too reliant on questionable ‘safe-spots’ and will rage-quit when it’s suggested that the group tries a different approach and then their preferred method.

Whoever implied AP’s meant anything in terms of skill to begin with?
Anyone flipping through the actual achievements pages can see how many require very little actual skill. So why would anyone assume that having more AP’s means more skill?
Especially when there’s rewards attached to them now causing people to farm out more dailies and more of the easier ones than they used to before.

MrRuin.9740:

Whoever implied AP’s meant anything in terms of skill to begin with?
Anyone flipping through the actual achievements pages can see how many require very little actual skill. So why would anyone assume that having more AP’s means more skill?
Especially when there’s rewards attached to them now causing people to farm out more dailies and more of the easier ones than they used to before.

They did not. Actually, there is no any good way to see player skills without testing em. So players forced to using not so reliable ways of checking it. At least ap filters newbies.

So many people are struggling to grasp the meaning of the word ‘proof.’

Sergoros.4398:

Tower Guard.5263:

I almost have 8k AP. Does that make me a good dungeon/fractal runner? No, because I stopped doing them a long time ago. I have been playing for a year and I’m not really interested in dungeons anymore. I used to run Fractals at least 2 times a day for 2 months, after getting all the skins I wanted I stopped. If I decide to run them again for the new fractal, you can bet I’ll jump in at 18 ~ 24 instead of 38 ~ 44. I’m practically a noob again

Just my 2 cents.

And u would be way better noob, than guy with 3k achiv.

Yes. U might make mistakes. But u would learn from them and do better. low ap guys, likely, dont even have understanding of their own class.

I see where you’re getting at. The AP is not to gauge dungeon experience but to gauge playing experience.

Although I don’t agree, I understand it.

kishter.9578:

every guardian in FOTM 40+ run whit hight vitality and good survavility build you know, to support the party! except this one yesterday he was running full zerker 30/30/10/0/0. whit GS. I just wanted to kill myself.

Seen people refuse to acknowledge they rolls and they limits in groups.

edit: i forget, He was 9k+ AP.

Wait, so all those <1h Fractal 48 runs I did on my full zerk guardian were bad? kitten , who knew. Guess I should run full clerics and camp staff in the back to get those <45 min runs huh?

KingClash.3186:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

No they don’t. People need to stop spreading this garbage. Almost every mob has different aggro priorities, and even then different skills on each of those mobs will prioritize different conditionals.

There’s a reason why no good teams run an Anchor anymore, let alone AH (in any dungeon).

Yup as far as I know its random, back in GW1 in the later years mobs were programmed to charge people with LESS armor such as monks to add more pressure into the game. So I can understand the confusion of the possibility.

Actually, that’s wrong. Mobs in GW1 prioritized based on which weapon you were wielding primarily, then based on your HP and then on armor I think. Which is why a lot of people in PvE wielded melee weapons in the backline, and tanks were stacked with HP (before shadowform).

A lot of tactics were based around this, for example Behemoths in UW and wurms in FoW wouldn’t attack if you had melee weapons up, but they would if you had a staff up, so people switched between melee weapon/shield and staff sets to kill them and cast Shadow Form without getting rupted etc.

Fun fact: there was even a bug with this, because a spear was not entirely seen as a melee weapon by mobs, but it wasn’t seen as a caster weapon either. When tanking rift in Gloom in DoA, if you aggro’ed the mobs wielding a spear, there would always be 1 Sanity Tormentor that would do what we called a ‘swag walk’ where he would first wander around a bit, before aggro’ing you. This meant that your Emo and who ever else was capping rift had to wait for the sanity to fully aggro. People in our guild actually thought that it always happened (until like 2010), but it was just because most tanks in the guild used Voltaic spears, and I found out it never happened to me because I always wielded swords (Oni blade and Plagueborn were my favorite), so after that tanks had to either bring a sword/axe or permanently tank with a sword/axe to avoid the swag walk.

Source: I know a thing or two about aggro and AI in GW1, because I used to abuse the everliving hell out of it.

kishter.9578:

every guardian in FOTM 40+ run whit hight vitality and good survavility build you know, to support the party! except this one yesterday he was running full zerker 30/30/10/0/0. whit GS. I just wanted to kill myself.

Seen people refuse to acknowledge they rolls and they limits in groups.

edit: i forget, He was 9k+ AP.

So wrong. We run full zerker. Everyone.

AP is a hope meter, 6k+ok this run might go smooth less than 3k, probably wont go smooth and will have to explain. Without removing daily ap and possibly monthly ap lots of peoples ap is from just religiously doing those every day, ive missed over 4 months of dailies and monthlies and some living story stuff, but im just under 9k, because ive done almost everything pve oriented so my ap is hopeful, however i have people in my guild either ahead of me or behind me and without dailies and monthlies would be far below me, but theyre still hopeful, but may not know all the fights in all the dungeons.

Stop saying its useless but stop expecting it to guarantee anything, just when you see low ap dont get your hopes up, and if its high ap, still dont get your hopes up too far.

And to those arguing toughness, generally its Initiator>Toughness(every so slightly)>DPS, bosses ignore most aggro mechanics, they just seem rng aggro, so using a boss to figure out aggro mechanics is wrong. Whoever initiates if they have high dps or high toughness can generally keep the mobs on them the entire time, as long as their dps isnt crap if theyre built tanky.

AP is one of the few ways players have of filtering out scrubs. The only time I dislike it is when it works against me (seen a couple 5k+ AP only groups when I’m perfectly familiar with the dungeon even though I only have 3.5k) but even then it’s understandable that they want to minimise the chance of noobs.

Considering the relative pointlessness of everything else in this game, except if you fall back to the argument that doing a specific something is “fun” for you and that’s the value of that, I would say in fact that AP means a lot, since it means you’ve played the whole content of the game. There is nothing else in this game that is more meaningful than that. In fact I believe that is why acquiring a Legendary is a legitimate goal, since it is part of completing the content.

There is no endgame, no vertical progression, nothing beyond the casual shallowness of combat(even in WvW) to warrant a significant meaning in having combat skills. There is only the lush, beautiful world with lots of things to do -and more things they give you to do every month. What else, therefore, can be more meaningful than AP, which measures how much of these you’ve covered?

Why skilled players need other skilled players to play is beyond me. It like everyone is carrying eachother.

Jordo.5913:

The moral of the story is elitists are stupid for using AP as a basis of skill, which makes no sense because I could accrue 10k AP just doing dailies and jumping puzzles and never stepping foot in a dungeon.

thing is, “elitists”, or good players not wanting to spend their free time holding other people´s hands as I would like to call them, do not do that.

Algreg.3629:

Jordo.5913:

The moral of the story is elitists are stupid for using AP as a basis of skill, which makes no sense because I could accrue 10k AP just doing dailies and jumping puzzles and never stepping foot in a dungeon.

thing is, “elitists”, or good players not wanting to spend their free time holding other people´s hands as I would like to call them, do not do that.

I call it “riding on my back”. Thats how it feels, when they all die in 1-st encounter and i have to kill all mobs by myself. Slowly and tediously

Sergoros.4398:

Algreg.3629:

Jordo.5913:

The moral of the story is elitists are stupid for using AP as a basis of skill, which makes no sense because I could accrue 10k AP just doing dailies and jumping puzzles and never stepping foot in a dungeon.

thing is, “elitists”, or good players not wanting to spend their free time holding other people´s hands as I would like to call them, do not do that.

I call it “riding on my back”. Thats how it feels, when they all die in 1-st encounter and i have to kill all mobs by myself. Slowly and tediously

Of course, sometimes it’s the elitist that dies first, blames everyone else even if it was them that were just Leeroying, and ragequits. Seen that quite often.

Just a thought, maybe you were taking less damage because he was soaking so much of it? I’m with Tolmos on this though.

Astralporing.1957:

Sergoros.4398:

Algreg.3629:

Jordo.5913:

The moral of the story is elitists are stupid for using AP as a basis of skill, which makes no sense because I could accrue 10k AP just doing dailies and jumping puzzles and never stepping foot in a dungeon.

thing is, “elitists”, or good players not wanting to spend their free time holding other people´s hands as I would like to call them, do not do that.

I call it “riding on my back”. Thats how it feels, when they all die in 1-st encounter and i have to kill all mobs by myself. Slowly and tediously

Of course, sometimes it’s the elitist that dies first, blames everyone else even if it was them that were just Leeroying, and ragequits. Seen that quite often.

Its noob. Not elitist. Or elitist noob. Dunno. Never seen such behavior from good player. Usualy its 2k achiv noob

Though, mby in my team they just had no reason to argue? After all, 4k+ team roflstomps dungeon without problem

Sergoros.4398:

Its noob. Not elitist. Or elitist noob. Dunno. Never seen such behavior from good player. Usualy its 2k achiv noob

Though, mby in my team they just had no reason to argue? After all, 4k+ team roflstomps dungeon without problem

not always. A lot of the times people with 6K + achievements are just as nooby as people with 1K.

Mirta.5029:

Sergoros.4398:

Its noob. Not elitist. Or elitist noob. Dunno. Never seen such behavior from good player. Usualy its 2k achiv noob

Though, mby in my team they just had no reason to argue? After all, 4k+ team roflstomps dungeon without problem

not always. A lot of the times people with 6K + achievements are just as nooby as people with 1K.

As i said before, they easy to teach. So run becomes smooth. Even if im to lasy to teach em, they still do good enough. Even If they horrible, its allways possible to kick em and find new. Anyway, its good filtering, cause results are way better, than with low ap.

These are the titles I have accumulated. I’m at just under 9k AP. The reason why I have No Title selected is because I wish to not brag about my AP and achievements while ingame.

I do Arah, CM, CoF, SE, CoE, AC, HotW daily with pugs.

If I see people with titles such as Dungeon Master, God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals, or Champion of the Gods, then I judge them harshly. If they make mistakes, then they are bad players and deserve to get told of their mistakes.

Pretty much, the way I play is: Everyone sucks (including me). If you wear a high-ranking title, you best play it or I’m going to call you out on it.

And yes, I get kicked out of Arah runs on a near-daily basis (usually towards the end near the boss).

I also will assist players if they try.

Example: Arah.
If you fall down, I will port you up. If you die (in Path 1), I will port you to the group.
If, in Path 2, we get to the boat and decide to go off map to skip mobs. I will port you if you try. If you fall and don’t attempt to get back up, I will jump down and run to the boss. If you keep attempting to get to the end, I will port you after one or two more tries.

Tl;dr: I’m not going to waste my time if you’re not going to put in your effort.

Treat everyone as if they have 0 AP. If they wear a high-prestige title, treat them only as good as they play.

After people found out even inexperienced people could wear and ping berserker gear, they needed to find something else that might show skill/experience. Thus they reckoned AP were a great indicator. Naturally, most of us knew that was complete garbage and laughed at the people using that method

Great players are great players because they are great players, not because they have a lot of AP or wear specific gear. Correlation does not equal causation after all.