Guild Wars 2

Or rather, that’s what it feels like they are saying. I’m an axe/mace guy (and axe/axe in Orr because ANet hates everyone), but when I go out to do one of the dragons, my effectiveness shrivels up and dies.

For those that may not know it, dragons can’t be crit, for whatever reason. And yes, that means that your precision and crit damage stats are effectively erased while fighting the dragon. Any and all traits connected to crits no longer function as well.

Also, if you were like me and thought, “Hey, I’mma gonna be smart and use dual swords and bleed this pumpkin to death!”, you should know that there is a maximum number (25) of stacks of bleed that can be on any given target, and that there are a lot of others that also put up bleeds. That means, as I found out, that your bleeds will rarely ‘stick’, because the stacks are almost always at 25, which leaves you with sword auto attack and the sword 4 rip. This also applies to rifle, your auto shot bleeds rarely stick, which feels like a pretty big hit to it’s overall damage.

Without crits axes are poor, without bleeds swords (and rifles to at least some extent) are poor, the mace is more for CC and dragons can’t be CCed, hammer’s CC goes to waste and I doubt the hammer 2 weakness has any effect on them because they don’t physically hit. So where does that leave us?

Well, as far as I can tell, it leaves us with the great overlord of warrior weapons, the one we can’t seem to get away from no matter how we try: The greatsword. No, it can’t stack might because it can’t crit either, and it’s vulnerability stacks go to waste most of the time too, but hundred blades could not ask for a better target than a giant, stationary lump of hit points. You can use it far more often than eviscerate even without speccing the cooldown reduction, because without being able to crit, adrenaline takes forever to build, and without a crit, eviscerate is pretty weak damage for the resource spent. Another thing I noticed, was that whirlwind attack seems to hit every spin for damage on a dragon because of the huge hitbox.

So lets hear a cheer for the greatsword, guys, and let’s all finally just give in and indulge ANet’s sick fascination with making the greatsword the overall best weapon period for all situations. Let’s all use the greatsword, with a side of greatsword, with greatsword for dessert, because to do anything else is to try and ice skate uphill. Why fight it? After all, it’s such a great sword.

I think it’s fair to cut the dps you can produce on the dragon – this way other players have chance to get their share of contribution in order to be eligible for the chest.
Oh and by the way – you forgot to mention bows.

Cutting dps is one thing, but it’s not evenly applied, and the overall strongest weapon is the least affected by it, so it stays the strongest weapon, and by a fairly big margin.

And longbows work OK, but they need the same baseline range as rifles. The burns seem to suffer the same problem as bleeds on dragons, but you can drop a might buff with it.

The problem with PvE in open world is that your only measurement for contribution to a monster is damage done as a % of life.

There needs to be other ways to register your commitment to an event and to achieve loot from corpses.

They should really put a system in place where anyone interacting with players within aggro range of a monster get ‘participation’ points that add up to an amount of required participation for loot. That way, if your within aggro range of a monster, using skills, each skill can be given its own set amount of ‘participation’ applied to targets.

This could also work as a threat system addition to help players have a little more control in group fights.

Yeah, I hate basically being forced to go axe/axe to get loot in Orr, and double hate it because I know I’m basically taking loot away from other people when I do. It’s a very poor situation currently.

For dragons(especially the shatterer) just equip a gun and go afk auto attacking.

You don’t need to hit the dragon. You can just kill the adds and get gold every time.

There’s no way i’m going to waste all my glorious CC by whacking at the toes of a dragon. i’m gonna brutalise his minions instead.

EARTH SHAKAAAA