Guild Wars 2

Hesacon.8735:

For what it’s worth, a power necro can also use epidemic with knowledge that another necro will overwrite the stacks and the damage will be done based on the second (condi) necro’s condition damage.

You seem to miss the fact that Epidemic uses the casters condition-dmg (but not condition-duration). So using epidemic with a power-nec is like throwing a small grape against someones head: Annoying but doesn’t do kitten.

Thing you seem to forget is that: Necro is not a class that should be “alone” in the team. Your team has to back you up to be effective.
Necro – especially Reaper – is still in a “decent” spot. It does good dmg, easily stacks up conditions (I mean #2 scepter and #3 + just switching into RS already stacks like 6 bleeds, 4-5 torm + cripple + weakness) and removes boons as easily with his auto-attacks on scepter. Necro is a teamplayer, never forget that.
The problem is that at the moment so many people run condition warrior which is simply overpowered atm and a pretty hard counter vs necros. They have loads of stuns, burns, conditions, blinds and CC and are almost all the time immune to conditions because of resistance or berserker-stance.
It’s not that Necro is not in a good spot – some other classes simply deserve a slight nerf to their accessability to condi-denying functions (wink wink condi-warr)

Greetz

Just had to jump into this…

While it’s true that necros on single targets don’t deal the ideal dps (still ranging in the higher ones especially when their minions die and trigger the poison-cloud) it’s all about the epidemic bouncing. You bounce a maximum of 25 conditions with each epidemic. Ever had 3-4 condition necros +1 PS and druid on the uncategorized fractal when fighting the shaman, grawl, bandit and bunny? Ball them on one point and start the epidemic bouncing. Everything dies within seconds (little exaggerated but you get the point). Epidemic allows us to stack several tens of stacks of poison, up to 200-230 stacks of bleeding (I usually see around 150-180 in my groups but more is possible) and here comes the kicker: It’s an AoE.
Even with a perfect and optimized zerg-group I highly doubt you could be a lot quicker than 3-4 condi necs, druid and PS (condi would be even better cause of burning stacks for epidemic).
The reason being: You’ll hardly get targeted by the boss-mechanics because your minions tank all the dmg. If you get hit you will take A LOT less dmg because of your toughness traitline. For example I usually have around 8-12 Minions (playing with Rise cause I want to trigger as many poison fields as possible) and I’m running full ascended viper gear. The Archdiviner on t4 fracs does around 5k when he hits me with his big swing, 7-8k when it crits. Normall you’d be close to a one hit.

And even if you were having bot necros in your group that do not know how to press the dodge button… You could simply let one necro in your group take the BM traitline for the life-siphon buff. It affects minions and minions heal their masters… Each hit heals for around 90 health and ppl have at least 6+ minions that atk every 3 seconds + you yourself attack aswell. It would take an incredible amount of stupidity to die while getting around 500+ health per second and having a reaper-shroud.

TL;DR – Viper necros provide high dmg with low skill when played with other necros (cause Epidemic does the trick) and are difficult to kill because of their high base HP (around 19kish?) + reaper shroud + Siphon buff. You can easily do t4 fracs in around 30 minutes or less (when it’s a reasonable combo and only includes one of the following fractals: cliffside/mai trin/chaos)
Optimized zerker groups could possibly be a little quicker but it’s so much easier to kitten up because you lack even more defense and it’s easy to lose your scholar buff

Greetz

@Minos
Well, Joe can talk in teamspeak I suppose. But in all honesty: If one person goes down it shouldn’t only be one person to rezz him up… At least in raids. And also I’d check the person dying: There’s enough tells as to when to dodge atks

Staff would be cool… If they use it like a Bo-staff in melee!

@ Xialoh’s more sustain build… Retrait the 2 points of water into earth for stone splinters… is a perma +10% dmg buff since u’ll always be in melee range with D/X. The Water-trait isn’t always up^^

Thief is in all Dungeons a must have. Doesn’t matter if you need blinds, stealth or just loads of DPS. DPSwise thief dishes out the most and is ranked #1 compared to other classes. Given the right group set up it’s a wonderful class to play Just don’t run something else than zerker in dungeons please… If you have trouble and you don’t have enough dodges: run the 5,6,0,3,0 build first. Then slowly adjust to the 6,6,0,0,2. Also remember: your Dagger AA regenerates endurance. Lots of ppl don’t know that

“Selling dungeon runs, at its core, is assisted-cheating.”

You seem to missunderstand something there. Cheating would imply that the dungeon itself wasn’t done the way it is supposed to be. If it was intended for only a group to clear the dungeon, then you would only be able to join a dungeon with a 5 man party. But you can join the dungeon by yourself and do the bosses by yourrself (ofc, exploits and stuff not taken into account for my statement. I expect it to be a legal run).

Also, it has been stated by ANet severel times so far, that selling dungeons is legal and even liked to be seen, since it’s been in GW1, too. Selling/Buying dungeons is a “gentlemen’s agreement” how it was called by the devs.

To your points 1-4:
1): Kicking will always happen, with or without people selling slots. If 4 players from a guild + 1 random pug play till the endboss and then kick the pug for a guildie… it’s the same prob.
2): “Ability to learn a class and dungeon mechanics”: Then prohibit ranging. Some bosses don’t use certain attacks if you stand in range. That’s an exploit, because you purposefully use it to avoid those attacks. If you want to learn how your class works you have to do dungeons solo anyways. Most bosses die way too quickly to actually see what they can do.
3): “Lessens gameplay time”: No, you simply do other things with your remaining time. An example: Arah p4 takes pugs 1,5h+ (seen some doing it for more than 3-4h) and you need the tokens or the path for the dungeon master title. Instead of doing a pug-run where you could even fail or get kicked at the end (reference to 1).) you can just buy it. It takes 5-20 mins for a group to fill. After that you still have leftover time where you can do whatever you like.
4): “[…] only thing posted in LFG tool are dungeon selling/buying[…]”: I don’t agree with that. This only happens very late in the evening or early in the morning where most players don’t bother doing a dungeon run. Some rushers just hope to get some gold, that’s why the LFG-posts sum up. Normally you always find groups that do dungeons together. And as far as I am concerned… The LFG-Tool is also intended for selling/buying purpose (I remember a statement from ANet, but can’t bother searching it now).

Greetz, Raph

I still hope some more teams register. So far only 7 :/

I run this version with a rabbid amulet – giving more precision than power – which is why I don’t need the 7% dmg boost from the XI trait. But that’s different if you run the powerversion of it.

Also, I don’t particulary use deep cuts for Pin down from the bow. It’s just a nice bonus (since a lot of people directly try to cleanse the pin down). Deep cuts comes really handy when using the Sigil of Geomancy which applies 3 stacks of bleeding for 9 seconds. With deep cuts + food + 4 points in strength this adds up to the 100% condi duration cap (18 seconds here) dealing some nice additional dmg.

Regarding necromancers: Practice I guess. They don’t have any viable stability aside from their elite. If you see them pop the elite just kite them for 20 secs. What is dangerous about necromancers is if you drop below 50% health. Then passive traits will kick in and rip boons and deal additional dmg + conditions. Also try to remember when a nec has the DS off CD. He will willingly come into close combat to proc his DS trait which applies bleeding in close combat (if he has 2 points in the 2. traitline and runs the trait but a lot do). One last thing: You have to dodge his signet of spite… When he uses it a big signet-animation pops above his head and since it has 3/4 sec castingtime you should be able to dodge it.

Cheers,
Raph

Well I just wanted to say some things… First of all this build existed for quite some time now (I guess over a year) and was first played by Lord Griffin.
Secondly… It is very easy to win with this build vs necromancers! Not sure why you’re having a hard time against them with such a CC-heavy build.

I would recommend using this version:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNApcTjMdUGarHWhwJigegC5NEDGDgl+UGo8OmDA-TpBCwAAeAAF3fwyRAwbZgLHCgKnAAA

You don’t really need 6 in disci. The adren is a nice to have but since we run a condition build we don’t hit very hard with our f1 skills anyways. Getting a longer bleeding duration is a lot better! Especially when people in WvW usually use -% cond buff-food. Fear me is a nice to have when fighting multiple opponents to make sure enemys won’t ress. Also Fear Me! works great to forcefully make people walk while having torment on them. Though it can be replaced by Endure Pain.

Also… I wouldn’t place comments from some WvW players as a testamony of the build being good… in WvW you can run almost everything and be good because people are playing like bots.

But to – nevertheless – underline your statement of the build being good: It has been run by some high ranking warrs in tpvp (in EU). For example ROM used it some times in the ESL weekly cups.

Get some1 to run the path one time with you. He does everything on his own and you just stand and watch and let him explain the stuff you have to watch out for.

Then you just have to go in countless times and get trashed by lupicus. It took me two weeks before I was able to safely solo Lupicus… And I went in every day and tried for 2-3h on him before raging ;-)

But it definitly pays off.

Best is to join [Noob] and see if some1 is available =)

^This
Full group can’t sell the path

Energy-sigil and zerker armor

I guess he made a typo and he runs 6,5,0,0,3^^

@Methal: sure this isn’t WoW or Aion… nevertheless at least in dungeons (most) people want to clear them fast. In open world content nobody cares what you play. Increasing the DMG and stacking/effective boonsharing is one of the easiest ways doing this.

But well, in the end it comes down to what you want to achieve:

Go pro or stay casual

Rush+Bulls
As for WW… no idea

Methal.9045:

The best thing to do, is pick whatever you like the most.

I run sword/axe and Longbow.
sometimes I switch to rifle.
Sometimes I feel like running around with a greatsword.

Its more how well you play your toon, and what kind of person you are, and less what build you go with.

Honesly who would you rather play with? some kitten elitist jerk from WoW with his own “omfgrofflestompyourface you don’t have the right build/gear!?!?!” attitude?

Or someone with 5 dps less, who is a joy to play with?

If it only were 5 dps no1 would be qqing about it
Sadly it’s more like doing 2-3 times more dmg when running the meta with the right armor and stuff compared to some pugs saying " I play what I want"

Run whatever you want but get ready to get kicked from a party in dungeons when they want you to run the right builds/weapons etc.

I would also recommend Nike!’s guide which was already linked.

@Wethospu
As I said – I just remembered having read that somewhere and wasn’t too sure myself aynmore. Thanks for your insight with your test. Do you happen to know how much crit-chance one loses if the boss is 1-2 lvls higher than yourself (fighting as lvl 80 a lvl 81 champ for example)?

@Miku
Mhh, might have just been my personal feeling then. I have seen Luca and Goku run 6,6,0,0,2 in arah for almost every boss except for Lupi and tried it myself and I felt quicker (talking solely about strength runes now). I should’ve probably done some more testing with actual numbers than just relying on my feelings there :P

So far, thx for the replies!

Purple Miku.7032:

I completely disagree actually. 66002 is not ideal for solos because the reality is that camping GS is only the best DPS if you’re able to maintain your rotation with GS. If you for whatever reason can’t bladetrail or rush or especially whirlwind, you’ll be doing a lot less than with GS + axe. Not to mention, with fast hands it opens up the opportunity to have a block or an extra dodge.

By the way even with scholar uptime at 100% of the time you still do slightly less than with strength runes and that’s assuming perfect rotations. The reality is you won’t ever maintain 100% hp without frequently breaking out of your 100b chains with a whirlwind or a dodge. Try it on something like Berserker Abomination to see what I mean :P

Not having GW2 installed atm but while reading your comment I thought: I do maintain my rotations especially on abo! I hardly have to ever cancel 100b. Bladetrail is a DP loss if used while in close combat (imho). And it’s only a dps loss if you can’t maintain the same amout of mightstacks as with the strength runes. Maybe the new food makes it more likely to get over 20+ stacks?

Yep, was talking about running with scholar runes instead of strength… At least in arah it’s not that hard to maintain 90%+ health as you know^^
And except for lupi I always run 6,6,0,0,2… everything else is just wasting dps :/

Wethospu.6437:

There is very likely no crit cap. I have yet to see any evidence of a non-crit against level 80 target with 100% critical chance.

Against level 81 and above your critical chance gets reduced.

Are you sure about that? I’m not certain myself – just remembering having read that somewhere.

@Miku, if you had to decide: What would you chose? Maybe taking the new buff-food into consideration (100 fero, 33% chanceo to get might on crit)?

Stunbreakers don’t work… However you can use teleportation skills (like Phase retreat on mesmer, blink, etc etc) even those that don’t break stuns since #5 of icebow isn’t a stun

Hey guys!

Some time ago I started crafting “Precise Infusions” for my asc trinkets and weapons. I remembered them being the best for maximizing DPS on your warrior (I think Nike mentioned them in one of his videos). Since lately I haven’t been playing GW2 I had some time to theory craft and came to the conclusion that “Precise Infusions” aren’t the optimum anymore. Since the meta for solo/group playing warriors now almost always include traiting 6 into arms (previously only 5) it seems to be better to use “Power Infusions”.
In my following examples I’ll calc with 6,6,0,0,2. If you want the numbers for the EA builds just take away 100 power (2 traitpoints from strength) and that’s it.

Build with precise infusions: http://tinyurl.com/mpanykd

Build with power infusions: http://tinyurl.com/od3nu6f

Both builds only use sharpening stones but no buff food and are based on ascended berserker gear + weapons + trinkets!

Power build has 2648 power and a 66% chance to crit. With active fury (20%) + banner of disci (170 prec/21=8% and some leftovers) it comes down to 94% chance to crit. If we add Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup (+100 prec, +70 fero) we get +5% crit chance giving us 99% crit-chance in total. If we use Plate of Truffle Steak (100 power, 70 prec) we get +3% crit-chance resulting in 97% crit-chance in total.

Prec build has 2578 power and a 69% chance to crit. With active fury (20%) + banner of disci (“…”) we get a total of 97% chance to crit. Adding Curry Butternut Squash Soup would result in too much crit chance (102%). Using Plate of Truffle Steak with prec infusions gives us 4% instead of 3% of crit chance due to rounding up/down issues – resulting in having 101% crit chance (wasted prec again). We would end up using food like Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup (+100 power, +70 fero) without any precision because we would always get too much crit-chance.

The cap for critting is, correct me if I am wrong, at 99% (at least it is below 100% since even when you have way more than 100% crit-chance you still sometimes don’t crit).

I didn’t calculate the pure DPS and only measured power vs crit chance – leaving out ferocity.

If someone has the DPS formula including power/prec infusions please be so kind and link them here!

Please share your thoughts on Power vs Precise Infusions including different foods (there are some new ones, too) and what you think would be best (including some numbers maybe).

Greetz

Nay. They got enough they can do. Seeing no reason for ANet to add even Aegis on them.

Been thinking about… If you were to allow rezzing: Only one member is allowed to rezz. The others have to wait on the spot before they are allowed to go to the next boss. Changing armor to those “increase rezz-speed” shouldn’t be allowed.
Having to wait till one player rezzes the defeated player takes some time and should be enough of a penalty?

Not a lot. The scaling was adjusted (in dungeons lvl <75 you do more dmg, on 75 you do around same dmg, in 80 you do less dmg compared to the previous update of april 15 (crit-dmg nerf)

8 hits that hit in total for 3944 multiplied by dmg modifiers etc

First of all… Welcome back!

Regarding lvling… When you play alone using a greatsword + axe/sword or axe/shield works well. Having a ranged weapon in your inventory in case you have to range (which doesn’t happen anyways). Regarding the new trait system… You have to unlock the traits now. You can either do this by buying the skills from a merchant (go to the heart of the mists, there you see profession-merchs that sell them) or complete the event that will unlock the trait (says so in the description I think).

Playing a warrior on average level is easy and easier compared to other classes. However… Optimizing your dps, using proper rotations and know what you have to do at every boss is what truly makes you a good warrior.
Mastering a class is always difficult – warrior is no exception.
^
Regarding PvE

Why not give this a thought to lessen the length of the tournament?:

Use a similar system as in GW1 where you had to gather points to qualify for the monthly GvG matches. You could break down the amout of matches per day/week so that you stream for like 1,5-2h in a row. Then you give points for winning/losing (as already suggested). Those that earned enough points and qualify for the monthly tournament then compete at a certain date ( e.g. forth saturday of every month). Then it won’t be as long and having pre-eliminations might spice things up even more?

Just my thoughts

All in all I was very happy how things turned out to be with this tourny. At some point I remember saying that the commentary wasn’t as good as in spvp. I didn’t watch all the matches and after re-watching them on YT I have to take back what I said. You guys did an amazing job there!

Greetz

Please Dev’s. Do something about it. We know you hate stealthing and stuff in dungeons. So either completly remove the item (DON’T!) or put some time into this and fix it :/
Btw for ppl who want to know how to unbug it:
- reset the event by letting all thieves die.
- when the event restarts make sure to cover the harpys. they should not get into combat too often and not die.
- during the event no npc should be rezzed! if done so=autofail
- when the veteran boss spawns, by all means DO NOT ATK IT! the skrit have to kill it or do at least the major dmg on it. Also make sure to kill the normal harpys atking the skritt!

Random ppl joining the event when it starts destroy this. so try this out when it’s night or make a copy-paste message and hope pugs will listen to it!

Would also recommend using Berserker/Zojja’s gear. They said during the live-stream that berserker/zojja stats will still have the highest physical dmg^^

Dee Jay.2460:

There seems to be a very real chance that ANet will add Power, Precision, Toughness armor in the upcoming patch since it was one of the most popular requests in the respective thread.

P/P/T seems to be armor that has “Warrior” written all over it. It’s certainly what I’ll be going for.

PPT… you mean Knight-armor that is in the game since release?

You say “general all around armor stat”. Do you want to hear from me: “Play what you like if you’re not interested in efficency?” Or do you want to know what will be most efficent (most likely since the patch is not live yet)?
Most efficent would be full berserker-stats IMO

Joey, to quote Sheldon Cooper
“That’s my spot!”
You can easily move Alphard around the wall so you can stand still and do your AA’s without him hitting you.. For the /afk ppl

Nope, no omnipotent infusions from WvW.
It’s just about 90g per omni-power infusion. Well at least it’s a “just” for me.

You are saying you deal massive condition dmg to your target but to be honest it’s most of the time just your AA. Ofc if the opponent stays still you will stack up easily 12-15 stacks of bleeding but I guess we are talking about tPvP. There will be no1 trying to walk straight backwards. every1 will strafe, port, block w/e. So you will be able to deal let’s say… 6-7 stacks of bleeding constantly (if it were to go as planned). Those stacks aren’t a lot of dmg.
Now you may say: LB #5, F1, #3 for burning, immo + instant 6 stacks of bleeding do deal a lot of dmg. And yes they do. but that is most likely the only “condition-burst” combo the warrior has every 25(!!!) seconds. Unless you aren’t able to CC them for at least 5-6 seconds after applying all conditions you’re condi-build is rather useless and doesn’t pressure the enemy at all.
Nevertheless you heal your teammates for alot but in the current meta this build has no place. You can run it in HJ or in 1 vs 1 games if you want to troll.
But for trolling you should use the 20,10,20,0,20 build with m/s + LB. You can easily CC the enemy for 7 secs just with stuns and fear (using Fear me for maximum troll).
But well in the end everybody should play w/e he/she likes best^^

yes but you can use omnipotent infusions. they fit in every slot!

You’re making a zerker-armor and wondering if you should put in def-infusions!?

Just to get this straight, 6 vita-infusions equal 30 vita-points which equal 300 HP. Even after the healsig-nerf this will be healed in 1 second!

Just go for the power-infusions. They are the most effective ones after the crit-dmg nerf since getting high-power numbers will be the best thing to do

Regarding the flashy animation of skull crack… ever heard prediction? If you play a lot you get a feeling for situations where your enemy is going to do something insanly stupid/predictable and you abuse that.
But you don’t even have to predict a lot! If you know the animations and how long they last you can start using your skull crack to hit directly after he finished his evade. Especially sins that rely on their sword evade are “easy” targets. Wait till they are doing their “180° degree turn” when using the sword evade and start using skull crack. your skill should land about the same time the sin stabs you…
Just some tips for still landing your skull-crack.
Also after seeing your video I can say that you weren’t that much into real PvP before, right? I don’t want to offend you here. I just saw you doing a lot of stupid “beginner” mistakes like wasting dodges and using skills at times where it wasn’t useful at all. Without them you could’ve killed that thief!

Well first of all would be good to know if you play a shatter mes or something else.

If you go for shatter I would consider using a Torch (but untraited) or a focus. Also when going shatter I would refer to the meta-shatter build. But if you like yours more stick with that.
Pros torch: nice stealth for some survivability and a ranged warden with some nice dmg + confusion
Pros focus: a pull attack with your mes, getting some swiftness etc. stationary warden dealing a lot of dmg.
Cons of torch: no stun
Cons of focus: the stationary warden..
I use pistol when I’m mad and want to go for a 6s+ stun on my enemy :P But you feel the lack of mobility/survivability alot when you fight more than 1 person :/

Edit Forgot to mention the sword you were asking for. I don’t particulary like the sword. It may have a daze but it’s not instant and you always have to decide whether using the block or daze. Also I don’t like the nr 5 skill of the sword because he is bugged regarding the atk-rate trait (his atk-cd is not lowered). So I stick with either pistol, torch or focus depending on the situation^^

Recently a lot of people started selling Arah paths. I was wondering whether it is legal or not (I do remember that ANet didn’t say anything against it in GW1).

So here is my question:
Is it legal to sell Dungeon-Paths IF(!!) done without using exploits? Meaning no save-spots (though this is hard to confirm) and no boss-skipping (like Lupicus)?

If there is a statement from ANet regarding this issue it would be nice if you could post a link in this thread.
If a Moderator could answer this it would be even better!

Greetings,
Celeste