Guild Wars 2

I’ve been saying you get zoned frequently as a melee capable of pulling threat, which, and while I appreciate the videos you linked, happened several times to the warriors even with added guardian sustain. Not to mention I’ve virtually never run with a guardian who uses a hammer on any occasion.

It could be that they weren’t strafing well enough, and I won’t argue the point until I test it myself. However, with warrior sustain, you cannot tank the hits for any amount of time and expect your 30s heal to be back by the time you need it, even accounting for dodges.

Honestly I circle strafe most of the time when on the axe side of GS/axe rotation, and never really noticed a difference. Maybe it’s because I didn’t expect there to be one, with the hilarious tracking fails like dredge and other mobs shooting backwards through themselves. From my experience the only boss where strafing was used as a crucial avoidance mechanic is Seamus from CM.

I’ll take your word for it, but in regards to snowblind shaman, firstly I don’t feel it’s valid to assume every run will have 2 guardians, especially ones dedicated to being more rather than less useful. Secondly, assuming the boss attacks one person throughout, if you can’t dodge entirely through strafing the AA+dot are going to end up doing significant damage. Not to mention 20% of the time the boss is vulnerable he’s breathing.

I appreciate the input, though I’d be genuinely surprised if the mob tracking allowed for this.

Bright: those for sure, probably the guardian & final bosses in CMp2, and the concept behind final dredge boss requiring it to be kited (save the final % nuke).

Ethics: you probably ought to read my post entirely before making a fool of yourself, either that or you don’t do enough dps to pull threat. If you have aggro, most bosses with an auto-attack can no longer be melee’d because you won’t have the sustain to continue attacking them, causing you to be zoned. That is not acceptable, even if melee does more damage than range having one sucker with aggro run in circles while the other melee chase it (4 attacking vs 5). If you predict who pulls threat the most often, that person can swap to a range weapon I guess, but that in itself is pretty silly.

Edit: The reason I originally bothered to post is because I’m legitimately curious what people’s solution to this issue is. It could just be that competent warriors are OK with being able to engage a boss half the time (with the other half spent trying to drop aggro), which simply doesn’t appeal to me.

I don’t know how it hasn’t been brought up that though melee is much more damage efficient, virtually every boss with an auto-attack will zone you. Virtually every boss that drops red circles will camp in them. Some bosses by their mechanics alone are explicitly not meant to be melee’d.

Yes, overall melee is better simply because the motif of the game is to nuke and dodge, but melee will in fact be broken as long as the aggro/boss auto-attacks remain the same.

I’m not sure how everyone else seems to avoid being zoned, whether they’ve got a full knight’s guardian in every group, or just don’t do any damage, I don’t know.

Needless to say though, it’s pretty irritating needing to disengage from a boss and kite in circles each time you get aggro. As it stands most bosses that do regular swings do so too frequently to dodge consistently.

For instance, cliffside Archdiviner and the snow svanir boss. You can’t dodge the melee frequently enough, and you certainly can’t tank it.

I’d love to see someone say this is an l2p issue and melee as it stands is acceptable. Though of course, if you down and get res’d, you’ll probably end up doing the same or higher overall damage than most ranged, but that is NOT the point.

Seconded…….

Having dungeon accessibility tied to a 10+ minute ESCORT AND DEFEND event that cannot be sped up regardless of player numbers/ability, and resets every 30 minutes is a bad idea period.

It would be one thing if this event was on the same timer/window as other events worth doing (the chest boss spawns), and wasn’t an ESCORT.

I wouldn’t mind going over there and killing X mobs in the area to unlock it for my group, and when it wasn’t set in stone that the trouble would take 10+ minutes, people probably wouldn’t be as inclined to leave and find another group who have an open instance. Because it’s actually faster to do that, especially as a Warrior or Mesmer, than sit around and wait for one person in another server to escort the mob and camp for 6 minutes killing adds. Considering that you have to leave the instance to start another path or reset, this becomes especially irritating.

Also, to those who would suggest the event is to counteract the CoF farm, no. It’s been like that before CoF p1 was recognized as the premier farming run, as has the broken npc letting everyone know the gates of flame have been captured regardless of their actual status.

In short, having a dungeon be contested is in general an unfortunate concept, but in this case it goes above and beyond with the purely time-sink event.

Block skills that last for 3 seconds and cause you to be in animation that prevents you from helping your group dps the adds isn’t useful at all unless it’s to run behind the WoR. The best argument that the adds are OK is that you can usually lay an AoE large enough to rally quickly after downing if you’re caught out.

It’s unfortunate there are so many players around willing to enable selective content just so they can pretend to be better than others.

What do you think you’re doing in this encounter that takes so much more skill, rather than composition? Strafing back and forth at 900 range until it’s time to stack behind WoR?

The fact is that the reflection skills are broken. They trivialize some content which isn’t designed with their use as a given, or cause headaches for every group that does not have access to them when it’s what the encounter is based on.

Which is why the adds that spawn in a large area around this boss should not all have a ranged CC that can’t be mitigated with stability.

Surely there is somebody who is confident enough in their own ability to say that this boss is disproportionately difficult at higher levels without the use of certain profession limited abilities.

I suppose it’s also OK that most of the fractal bosses can either camp their AoE a significant portion of the time, or have an auto attack that is too frequent to dodge and subsequently zone any melee who have aggro. Unless of course you’ve got a guardian tank.

It’s a fight that overly relies on certain class mechanics not available to everyone. If you are in a PUG group that doesn’t have a member of X profession (or doesn’t know what they are doing), it can be impossible to carry depending on your class more than your ability. And like I said earlier, the majority of the problem is with the poor choice of adds, otherwise it’s just another fractal encounter that zones melee.

Anyways it can’t be solely written off as ‘l2p’.

1) The adds, if ranged, should not immobilize and spawn closer to the boss, otherwise they should just be melee mobs. This mitigates the need for a class with anti-projectile walls, which as it stands trivialize the most ‘difficult’ part of the encounter. I’m sorry if anyone is currently under the impression they are a better player for stacking behind a wall of reflection before engaging the mobs.

2) The 2 separate anti-melee dive bomb attacks need to be on the same CD, so that attempting to melee the boss isn’t just going to burn dodges 90% of the time. This will help shorten the encounter and thus alleviate the sustain requirements (aka a support class).

I’ve died during dodge roll and whirlwind.

It’s a bug.

View the combat log, it displays me using one whirlwind and being hit mid evade.

So now the windup attack you are supposed to dodge cannot be avoided and will one shot any meele. I believe the singular bomb attacks are bugged as well.

-CC needs DR.

-The aggro system does do this on occasion to people, proving it to be broken for one of several reasons.

-If you’re telling him to take a stun break, you didn’t read any of his posts.

There isn’t a point it just hasn’t been fixed.

I’m not arguing against speed runs. Efficiency, knowing exactly how to complete the run as fast as possible, are legitimate ways to enjoy a dungeon experience be it for loot or whatever.

The problem is as XelNigma is saying, there isn’t really an alternative to doing that. The way the trash is designed encourages every pull to be either LoS’d or skipped. Not to mention the rewards you get for doing so, as you say, people don’t do completion runs out of the virtue in their hearts.

In most games the trash is less an ordeal, not everyone has to be a speed runner regardless of preference. So if the current design was intentional, wouldn’t it actually be better just to give access to the boss WPs by default? Because as a speed runner, I don’t think anyone actually enjoys running past mobs they’ll never fight. There is also the matter of where you draw the line in an MMO, like the CM mountain climbing skip. I’d say that goes a little too far beyond speed running into a loot bandwagon.

Indeed I know Mario has speed runs, I’ve watched siglemic break the world record! But Mario isn’t an MMO, and you’ve got a choice.

Is it okay if we skip bosses too? Actually, could we just get a direct WP to the loot?
But seriously, if you don’t like playing the game by interacting with mobs, what are you even doing dungeons for?

The thing is it doesn’t need to take forever, it doesn’t need to be without incentive, and it doesn’t need to require a bunch of reflect utility skills. There are two very separate parts of the conflict:
1) Whether or not skipping mobs should be allowable in most circumstances
However, a lot of people are only championing this as a necessary choice because-
2) Silver trash having an extremely low effort / reward ratio

Sure, there should be optional side-stuff, but having mobs standing around just to have players equip a stability skill and run past them is silly. Look at an Arah run, how much of that is extraneous skipping? It isn’t some great choice bestowed on you by ArenaNet to be able to skip because there is no reason to clear the (frequently irritating) trash.

Siv.4351:

Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder if a dungeon dev team ever existed in the first place.

I think you may be on to something / thanks for the signature.

The best part is when, upon being able to infuse amulets, everyone will have to repurchase their utility infusion for 20 laurels.

wizzy.6871:

Avylin.2635:

Please, do us all a favor and demonstrate how pro you are by fighting a champ wraith, rather than making absolutely useless posts on a critical forum thread. Do take a culled plague carrier 40k to the face as well. Maybe a few ranged 20ks by chickens would also contribute to a little humility.

this made my day :P

Well, whether you were trolling or not aside, it WOULD be a critical thread assuming they’d do something about it.

I don’t understand why this is so difficult to convey, for all the hate ‘tank and spank’ gets, it only makes sense that utilizing something else totally devoid of skill to basically initiate a tank and spank should be equally frowned upon, especially when many of the instances seem to be designed with that in mind. It’s like a big exercise in validation for everyone who wants to put themselves above the ‘casual’ gamer. They go through one extra step of pulling them mobs around a corner, rather than running in and fighting them. I don’t think that one extra step is worthy of being called strategy in any relevant sense.

Iures.2894:

I like how you try to claim that LOSing isn’t a valid tactic when, in fact, it’s probably one of the most fundamental tactics of war. . .

It’s just. . . I have to wonder what you were thinking when you typed that.

And I qoute:
“Consider that we’re talking about a game here, not an IRL war. As anyone can see there are many realistic things that don’t translate well to gameplay.”

If you’re going to argue that LoSing doesn’t break/trivialize many pulls, then I’m not going to feel compelled to correct you.

I’m saying your concept of it as a strategy is less correct than it being poor game design. By that token, every exploit is also a strategy, which is what this topic was actually about. Taking the path of least resistance is a pretty loose definition of strategy, but whatever, I’m not going to argue over a technicality. The fact of the matter is that you’re giving LoS too much credit if you think it’s a measure of skill and/or strategic gameplay, at least insofar as GW2.

Edit: My posts are always very informative.

You do realize that LoSing every pull actually minimizes the strategy you can use in an encounter, and trivializes what would otherwise be difficult, right? And that designing things intentionally to require LoS makes the gameplay exceedingly tedious and gimpy.

Consider that we’re talking about a game here, not an IRL war. As anyone can see there are many realistic things that don’t translate well to gameplay.

Now tell me how having one person pull a mob, with the other 4 stacked behind a wall, waiting to button mash is substantially better than the gasp ‘tank and spank’ stigma that every wannabe pro throws around. I’d even say you’re getting less out of the game by resorting to such a ‘strategy’ every time rather than attempting to engage them normally, trying to manage them with aggro, or use control skills (like the guardian greatsword, mesmer curtain etc). In that case you are at least semi vulnerable, and have to react accordingly.

But then look at CM. Everyone effectively has to go range and stand still in order to not get 2 shot sniped. No, you cannot dodge every shot either. No, having a guardian in your group to reflect stuff isn’t skill either. Of course, you LoS them, but how fast does that get old?

April fools!

Oh, wait.

Anyways they are aware of the issue, but there is no ETA on when one of the two 80 zones will be playable again.

Just want to clear up some misconceptions:
Having to LoS every pull to AoE mobs down is not ‘strategy’
Skipping mobs is not ‘strategy’ nor is it ‘intended’. It’s poor effort / reward ratio.

Now, I’m not saying this is the fault of the players nor implying everyone should start clearing all the trash, but there being trash in a dungeon with no reason to engage it, for the preposterous idea that this differentiates GW2 from WoW…..No.
Mobs aren’t put there to skip unless avoiding them is a specific dungeon mechanic. It’s not a matter of ‘play how you want’ either, because nobody wants to kill mobs that ALL CC and ALL have a ton of hp and ALL drop nothing.

What I’m saying is, don’t make excuses for things that are obviously broken, especially by comparing GW2 to another game.

I’m actually entirely sure that anybody who voted ‘no’ is being contrarian and as such isn’t entitled to input.
EVERYONE hates the dredge fractal because it is awful, and if by chance you don’t feel extreme animosity towards it, it’s because you run with a guild consistently, and most likely glitch through it every time.
I hate to say it, but if the dredge fractal was released as an instance in WoW at any point, it flat out wouldn’t have been tolerated.
Anyone who would argue that it takes skill and/or tactics to get through the fractal, may you suffer an eternity of dredge grunting.

It makes sense that they added some new skills to the ‘endgame’ mobs to make them less one-dimensional. The problem is that most of these skills are designed to counteract zerging (via AoE/piercing) as a potential alternative to adding ridiculous levels of scaling….except they received broken scaling anyways, and can now one shot multiple players.

On the other hand, the 1200 range Life Transfer for the Risen Wraith has absolutely no merit regardless how much damage it does.

IMO the mobs should have been given (narrow non-1shot) cleave attacks, because it is too difficult to watch for specific animations in the midst of 20 meele. It would be more reasonable to test player’s situational awareness by directing them to stay in a certain position in regards to the mobs. Also mob AoE/pierce attacks should not CC (gorillas), or rapid fire so they cannot be completely dodged (chickens).

It’s more than a few select areas where the scaling is messed up (it may just be veteran/champs in general), it’s virtually all veteran/champ mobs tied to an event.

This attachment is from the last segment of an event chain in Wayfarer Foothills (1-15) which ends with a champ. I encountered the champ alone, with nobody else around attempting it. Before the patch that broke the event scaling, you’d never see this mob up by itself, because those running the previous events would already be in position to take it out and complete the chain. Not to mention it is in a heavily populated zone, full of 80s running dailys and waiting for The Maw. Shortly after facing it myself I found out why, as seen in the screenshot. Keep in mind my hp as a scaled down level 80 warrior is 1500, and I am using a significant amount of Knights (toughness) gear. Also remember that I was soloing, so this wasn’t an artifact of zerg scaling. This cannot be intended, and I just hope ArenaNet is working on the issue.

Honestly I kind of doubt that it’s a permanent change. I suspect they are working on revising the event scaling formula now, and aren’t commenting so they don’t have to give an ETA.
Personally I think taking the time to get it right is the correct thing to do, but given the game-breaking nature of the error in the current formula, I believe an apology and a “We’re working on it” is in order regardless.

wizzy.6871:

wouldnt it be better to have only chest there lootable so ppl wont have to cry on forums that events are hard?
EDIT: oh I forgot that events have to be as easy as possible so everybody can finish them not caring about learning how to play first

Please, do us all a favor and demonstrate how pro you are by fighting a champ wraith, rather than making absolutely useless posts on a critical forum thread. Do take a culled plague carrier 40k to the face as well. Maybe a few ranged 20ks by chickens would also contribute to a little humility.

I’m curious if anyone during any event has actually managed to kill the 1200 range Life Transfer champ Risen Wraith.
Maybe this is ArenaNet’s method to make Rangers relevant, what with them having the only dps at 1500 range. (LOL)

What is this I don’t even…
Do you just mean a pistol with a white skin? If so, and for a look at all the pistols, check the gw2 wiki → search Pistol → scroll down and hit ‘gallery’. That has most of them anyways.

Official reply pending…

This needs to be fixed. It is beyond comprehension that a system like this made it out of the beta, and defies all human understanding how it has not since been dealt with in a manner befitting the fundamental error of the issue.

No amount of coding necessary to patch this problem is too much, and every passing moment in which this mechanic is not remedied reflects poorly on Arena Net.

Champion Risen Wraiths wiping entire events of people – not dropping loot.

Being one shot by a VETERAN Chicken, at range, ‘shoot egg’, while on a warrior using Knight’s gear.

So my guess is they gave some of the lvl 80 mobs new skills to make them less one dimensional, without actually considering how the new skills scaled in events. AT ALL.

At one point before it was fixed, the Champion Risen Wraith was literally invincible, only Longbow Rangers could hit it without dieing instantly and healing it (1200 range Life Transfer ticking for 5k 2x~ a second).

Could a dev please respond to this, it really, REALLY needs to be fixed in order for people to continue dynamic events in the area.

This is NOT a discouragement to Cursed Shore farming, it’s a completely broken scaling issue. If the aim is to lessen the profit you can get from CS farm, then fix where the T6 mats drop so that the only viable way to get them isn’t from Heavy Moldy Bags.

Noerknhar.3826:

red.5013:

For me it seemed that control is the key, not zerker dps.

How dare you tell people to not facerool their keyboards while pressing 112f112f112f on their zerker dps warriors? Everything should be doable with least effort and zero tactics. Ah and the devs should be flamed more. Jesus christ…

I really hope for your sake that you are trolling.
In the possibility you aren’t, make sure to read the actual thread, so as not to give the topic an illusion of conflicting opinion.

This is as matter of fact as it gets, the changes were not tested to any degree, and the last thing we need are the l2p morons coming in here and giving everyone else advice about broken content.

*Edit: the Risen Wraith ability was fixed, nvm (it was previously impossible to kill and instantly downed everyone in the area at 1200 range). However, the event scaling is still messed up for ‘all’ the escort quests, champion chickens hitting me for 20k, etc. It’s all been said before, and the most recent scaling change has just exacerbated the already existing issues.