Guild Wars 2

We have story instances for story, and fractals for repeatable 5-man content. I think this is good and healthy for the game.

Dungeons are worse at story than new story instances because people demand that you skip cutscenes and run through as fast as possible. Most dungeon cutscenes I’ve watched on youtube because I didn’t want to form a group that was willing to take their time.

Dungeons are worse than fractals at repeatable content because they are not variable difficulty and by their nature of being tied to story include dialog that gets tedious after doing it many times (some fractals have fallen into this as well, but the design space is open for fractals to avoid this as opposed to dungeons).

In order to make dungeons, I’d imagine they have to pull people from the story and/or fractal teams. This would slow down the release of both of those types of content. I don’t think it would be worth releasing content that is mediocre at both repeatability and story, and slowing down the release of separate content that is better at its own niche.

The problem with these lists is they are dependent on people’s different experiences. People pugging will likely have a very different experience from people in static groups.

Also, depending on what group comps you have available in a static you could have dramatically different results. A group without ranged dps will struggle with MO a lot more than a group with some condi ps and maybe a necro.

Lastly, it depends on what class you play. The person who tanks Xera would rate it differently than the person who just hangs out dpsing and follows the commander’s instructions.

I’m sorry to hear that you’re having some difficulty finding a group, but keep at it. You’ll eventually find a guild that fits. One thing to look for is voice chat info in the guild message. They might have been in teamspeak organizing or something, although I think it is still a courtesy to whisper before filling someone’s spot.

Also, everybody uses the LFM part of the raid lfg. As someone without a group you should be looking for groups that need spots filled, not waiting for people to contact you.

It’s tough to choose a best experience because there have been a lot, but I think it would have to be when they changed Glyph of Elemental Power to have a shared internal cooldown with other elementalists. It was bugged so that if you had a bunch of eles, there was virtually no internal cooldown. A group of friends transferred condi gear over from our necros to quickly make poorly optimized condi eles and then took on Gors. It was a hilarious and fun night, and I think we ended up killing it at the last moment with 8 eles and 2 druids. The burn stacks were ridiculous.

My worst experience was with 5 or 6 member of a large, well known raiding guild. They were constantly talking about how they had to carry the pugs while us pugs were in voice chat with them. One of their friends came in and they kept joking about how these pugs they were in a raid with sucked (while we were all in voice chat). This was before dps meters were a thing, so they couldn’t see dps, and some of their guildies were the ones going down the most, so it wasn’t even justified. I stayed longer than I should have because I had been invited by one of my friends (who didn’t know these people). This was the only raid I’ve been in where I was the recipient of genuine insults.

What I’ve learned from this is when you find people you enjoy playing with, hold on to them. If you keep playing with them you’ll keep having good experiences. Meanwhile, if you’re playing with people you don’t know you should be open to the possibility that they aren’t people you’ll enjoy, and that removing yourself from the situation is better than spending a few hours being miserable.

Here is what I came up with: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQRAnZ5enckC9dgdfA2eAElilfAz4BEAaAJNhlw2795Wd3uA-ThSBAB4pfgMlYDcQAA4EAclyDzUCSz+DUq6CFPBARVjgUABO1C-e

Note: this is for PvE. I don’t know enough about other game modes to suggest a build for them.

For your offhand weapon, I recommend mace. In 5-man content, vulnerability stacking is relevant and mace does a great job at that. It also gives you access to a small break on your dps set. Axe/mace actually used to be standard for warriors to use if there was another warrior in the party (this was before HoT).

A warrior has some of the best offensive buffing capabilities, and so I tried to make the build continue to bring those abilities. There are sigils of strength in the weapons so you can still stack might without the greatsword. I also included food and runes that help with might. I might have gone a little overboard with the might duration, but I can’t be sure without playtesting. You can try running dungeons without the food and see if the might uptime is still good.

It’s not the end of the world if you go full berserker gear instead of the few pieces of assassin’s, but you won’t hit 100% crit chance. I also assumed semi-optimal group comp (with you as the PS warrior), so if you don’t have Spotter from a ranger you’ll also drop below 100% crit chance.

I tried to make this build as good as possible with the restrictions you defined, but be aware that it performs strictly worse than its greatsword counterpart. You’ll do great in dungeons and low level fractals, but people would likely not welcome it in T4 fractals. Do NOT bring this into a raid.

GLHF

choovanski.5462:

I seem to remember 30/0/25/0/15 being better tho

Best build is 14/14/14/14/14

Zlater.6789:

So do ps warriors aim for a personal might target when they train or are by themselves, and what would that be?

I focus on my dps, not might generation. If I am doing good dps, then I will be generating an appropriate amount of might as well. As long as you’re getting crits about once per second you’re good.

12.5 stacks seems normal for when your FGJ stacks aren’t up.

The most valuable thing you can do is compare yourself against other people in the same raid. That way you have a point of comparison with similar buffs and ressing needs. If I were to give you a number, it would be based on my experience in my static groups and the buffs we usually have, and that may not match your runs.

If you are on a dps, you should be above or even with the other dps, and you should be a few k above the warriors. If you’re a warrior, your goal is to be only a ~3k below the dps (or higher than the dps is they are not doing well).

I know this isn’t the answer you were looking for, but any numbers I could give would have a very wide range. I might try looking at some logs later and coming up with something, but probably not because I’m lazy.

I suggest checking out GW2LaunchBuddy. If you use it for multiboxing then you don’t have to edit the executables each time there is a patch. Normal use case is open lauchbuddy, check accounts you want to log in to, click launch.

There are some drawbacks like needing to store your account info, and needing to trust this program to run as admin, but it is open source so you can check out for yourself if you’re ok with running it.

This is the most recent reddit post I found.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5ch05r/gw2_launchbuddy_beta_13_release/

This is the github page.
https://github.com/TheCheatsrichter/Gw2_Launchbuddy

All kidding aside, it would be interesting to see some testing on how much of a dps increase conjures are for different classes. A necro would benefit from the chills on the icebow, but would an ele’s higher power mean they would have more of a dps increase? I genuinely don’t know what class would benefit the most from the various weapons.

What’s a necro?

There are a few items in game that let me have fun at other people’s expense. I love using the guild banner tonic on a crowded area and watching everybody get confused. I love using experimental teleportation guns on the daily vista to drop people off cliffs. I like occasionally running around with a choir bell spamming keys.

To me, Quip and Dreamer fall into the same sort of category. One of the features is that they can be used to annoy the heck out of other people. Regardless of if you think that is an okay use of those items, it is a reason that some people will have gotten those weapons. If you change the sound, then that is unfair to the people who devoted all the resources for a legendary weapon into getting that sound.

It might be a small minority of people who got those weapons for this reason, but I bet it is non-zero. It is unfair to them to change it without adding something else to satisfy them.

This is most likely out of scope of your project, but here are some ideas if you are determined to change the sounds:
1. Add an option for old/new sounds so people have a choice.
2. Unbind the legendary so people can sell it if they no longer want it. This would be complicated by people transmuting over the legendary and transmuting the legendary skin onto other weapons.

Personally, I think you should just not change it. Changing an item that expensive in any way is not objectively better is going to make people upset.

suicidalspectre.8106:

My issue tends to be that all these raid sellers just idle in LFG and never respond. I must have sent a dozen messages to get a price quote and nothing.

Frequently the sellers leave an alt to hold the LFG while they do other things on their main. Usually there will be an account or character name in the LFG message that you need to whisper. If you join a raid sell advert and type in squad chat, they’re not going to see it.

W4B2 might be a lot harder for a group that struggles with raid bosses than people think. If you lack add control (I recommend new groups bring a necro) and the people with the special skills don’t know their role very well it can go south quickly. I’ve been in a number of groups where a shielded jade lights up all the platforms because dispel is on cd and protect is running willy nilly all over the place. This is compounded by you having 10 new people in the group, so there is nobody to teach the fight. I’d recommend Escort or Trio over W4B2.

That being said, it is still easier than VG. Vale Guardian is one of the harder bosses. People just think he’s easy because he’s the first boss and so everybody has done him a lot.

During the week, I have less time to waste. Thus I like to have as many options open to me for what bosses I want to kill. Whether it’s with a static or pug, I want to get into a raid quickly and kill lots of things without worrying about getting a specific boss.

On the weekends I usually only have one or two bosses left. This works well because I can afford to wait around not doing much for 3 hours looking for that one boss on a weekend.

If it was the other way around, I would probably raid a lot less during the week because I wouldn’t be willing to spend my time waiting for a group.

UnbentMars.9126:

All I want is for my healing elementalist to be desireable.

I love bringing a heal ele in groups. I think it is superior to druid in fractals because its heals have a wider range for when people spread out due to social awkwardness, and nothing in fractals has an enrage timer. We also frequently bring a heal ele to low dps, high movement raids like Matthias and VG. It really smooths out those kills.

However I think most PUGs are not receptive to this. It does lower damage since you are lacking GotL. I rarely do PUGs anymore though, so I’m not really sure.

@TexZero: I think the idea is to take the might druid over a magi druid. This way you’re replacing the condi warrior with a condi ranger.

@EpheSOSlayer: What confuses me about your latest post is that you say might druid for both subgroups and then say that the warrior would take double banner, but there is no warrior in either subgroup. When you said ‘the same as above’ I read that as ‘the same as Group1’ but I think you meant ‘the same as the meta comp’.

As for how much of a dps difference shattering blow is, for me personally it is about 1.5k. I was getting ~23k without and about 24.5k with, no infusions and sigil of earth instead of geomancy. So you’re right about it not being 3.5k.

It seems to me like this would have higher dps in theory. It certainly seems like the might and healing in that video was good. A lot of the concerns previously expressed in this thread about its actual viability on various fights still stand, but on golem-like bosses it could be good.

Raids are designed to be a step up from fractals for players looking for more of a challenge. There were quotes from devs saying that they probably wouldn’t be puggable because of the difficulty and coordination required. In other words, raids were designed to be completed by organized static groups.

Some people are part of a community in game that they do content with, and some people prefer to fly solo. Fractals are tuned so that solo players can lfg and complete them. Raids are tuned for the people that are part of organized groups that would trivialize other content. Just because they are designed for somewhat different demographics doesn’t make one better than the other.

If you really want to get into raiding, I recommend looking for a raiding guild. A guild is a (usually) safe place to learn raids because the members are invested in you improving. By teaching you and helping you, they get a valuable raider that can be part of one of their statics. Groups through lfg do not have the same incentive to help.

Essentially they couldn’t take away the achieve because that wouldn’t be fair to people that did it legit. However they still wanted a prestigious title from doing all the challenge motes and the previous title had lost its prestige.

Obtena.7952:

Just out of curiousity, what is the best PVE condi build for Mesmer, regardless of how poorly it performs?

Specific to raids, you want this build: http://qtfy.enjin.com/mesmer#Gear2
It is actually pretty powerful in raids, but that is because you have one high health enemy that you can cast your phantasms on. Most of the damage comes from your pistol phantasms. It would really struggle anywhere with trash mobs like open world, dungeons, and fractals because the ramp up time for the damage is very long.

The state of the game is that you don’t need defensive stats in order to tank any of the current bosses due to the presence of active defense. Necro works as a tank, but you still need 2 chronos, so you’re taking up a dps slot (inb4 2/22 balance patch).

Also, as part of balancing classes, there needs to be a tradeoff between damage and survivability. It is good for balance that the most damage comes from an ele and then a thief, and the most squishy is an ele and then a thief. The necro’s niche is that it is very naturally survivable, and so it should never be able to compete with those classes in terms of dps. That being said, there is definitely room for improvement with the balance so that necro can fit in to some fights. It would be good to see more necros kiting flak on Sab and casting epi on me while I’m a slubling.

The purpose of the magnetite cap is so that the items you can get with that currency retain value. The more they increase the cap, the easier it becomes to get all the skins, minis, trinkets, etc that you want. Right now the cap is in a pretty good place where if someone raids consistently each week, they will be able to get their most desired rewards. Increasing the cap would make raids much easier to get ascended gear from than other gamemodes, and decrease the value of things like ghostly infusions and mini eye of janthirs.

The rewards for killing bosses past the magnetite cap is the loot you get from those bosses. You can get ascended drops or minis, both of which can be salvaged for more shards if that’s what you want.

I can’t think of any bosses in fractals that have a tank. They just don’t aggro based on toughness, so you can’t hold their aggro.

Raids are the only content where a tank is really used because many bosses aggro on toughness, so becoming the tank is a simple matter of being the person with the most toughness. Chrono is frequently used for this, but I’ve also seen ele and druid tank as well. Both of those would be running heal builds while tanking.

I’ve taken long breaks from this game a few times before, and each time I wish I had kept doing my dailies while I was gone. If you don’t mind logging in for 10 minutes or less each day, then keep with it in case you ever get back into it.

Eponet.4829:

Wouldn’t it be better to use a sigil of concentration instead of paralysation on the mace?

Condition PS warriors can’t maintain might as well as greatsword warriors do, so I would imagine that when using M/Shield, the might stacks drop a bit.

Generally with 10 people you’re not going to be running into massive break bar issues, so wouldn’t the extra might duration from a sigil of concentration be better?

You would be getting 33% extra boon duration exactly when you are less able to stack might. The drop in might comes from the stacks from your gs wearing off while you are not able to reapply them quickly. Having might stacks from your mace last longer doesn’t affect how often you can apply those stacks. The point the concentration sigil would become useful is when the might stacks you applied while under the effects of the sigil start to end, however this is the same time that you would be swapping back to gs and spiking over the cap anyway. Thus you don’t get much from the concentration sigil.

I agree that you shouldn’t hit break issues with 10 people, which is why I put a force sigil in my mace. You get a bit extra damage for those few autoattacks.

That trait causes anyone who is affected by the shout to get heals, so it has the same target limit as the shout. Your For Great Justice will hit 5 people and those people will also get the heals. Shouts like Fear Me that don’t affect allies will still heal allies in your area, but the same target limit applies so they will only hit 5.

@Seera: Thank you for those links. I stand corrected.

In what way is it against the rules? You are trying to form a group to discuss joining your guild which is a legal use of the LFG tool. Since you guild is a raid guild, the raid lfg is the best currently existing category for that purpose.

I agree that adding a guild recruitment category would be the best solution to this issue, but until that happens the best spot for a raid guild recruitment lfg is in the raid category. Thus it is not appropriate to report those players at this time.

Our policy: Players may use the LFG Tool only for the formation of a group.
Players may use the tool to sell a spot in a group, but they may not use it to sell or trade items or for any other unintended purposes.

Is it ok to form a group for talking about joining a guild? You are still forming a group, just the purpose of the group is conversation instead of gameplay. It doesn’t seem like that is against the rules.

It seems like about the only thing this stance disallows is selling items. The ‘unintended purpose’ clause might cover more things but it is ambiguous. I feel like it would rule out website links or other potentially malicious posts.

Unless the person making the post is completely unresponsive on both that and other accounts they have given info for, and is just using the post for a message to be advertised to the community, then I think it is allowed.

Edit: Also, thanks to Seera and pfc for linking to Anet’s statement. I appreciate it

Can someone give a link to some official documentation that says these LFG posts where people are selling raids are against the rules?

I’ve always viewed the LFG tool as a pretty free and open form of communication and don’t like the idea of adding restrictions to how it could be used. If we don’t allow these selling posts we need to be very specific about the rules and consider what other types of posts would be disallowed.

In the current system, if I want to form a group to just chat with other players about things in the game I can do that. There doesn’t have to be gameplay involved. I think this is a fair and positive use of the LFG tool.

If I want to talk about a specific subject, it makes sense to put my lfg in that subject’s category. If that topic is raids, then there is no reason not to put it in the raid lfg.

If I’m looking for a group of people to talk with me about buying raid kills from my guild, then it makes sense to use the lfg tool and to put it in the raid section. This is exactly what the lfg tool was meant for.

Also, one of these posts in the lfg tool takes up a relatively small amount of space. The most I’ve seen at one time is 4, which can just be scrolled past. If these posts were not allowed in the lfg then you’d have those 4 people spamming map chat every couple minutes instead which would be much more disruptive.

If a post doesn’t interest you, just move on like you do with the rest of the LFG.

Vanilla builds can still get you through dungeons and fractals. Depending on your class you may be more or less disadvantaged, but you can still do it since this content doesn’t require a whole lot of optimization. People with HoT will probably be more effective than you though.

Fay.2357:

Weapons don’t have the same reliance on different sigils like armor does with runes. You can use an energy sigil or concentration sigil or other generic sigils in almost any build. Try using krait runes in a power build…

Try using a force sigil on a condi build or a sigil of malice on a power build. The same argument applies to weapons.

Also, the target audience for legendary armor is people who raid at least to some degree. This is also a demographic of people who will optimize gear. You shouldn’t be using an energy sigil for any raid build.

http://qtfy.enjin.com/warrior#Gear1

I’m guessing the scholar variant would be better for this situation.

Here are some of my thoughts/worries on a boss by boss basis.

VG: Due to the movement of the boss, condi ranger can lose a lot of damage. Stacking more than is needed for red might not be a good idea. Condi PS can position their aoes in such a way that the boss stays in them as it moves. Also, it is favorable to have burst dps for the split phase for green guardian. Every time he phases he cleanses condis, and condi builds have a ramp-up time for their dps.

Gors: Also removes condis at phase, reducing the benefit of condi builds. You pointed out that tempests would give higher dps. Also, you’re losing a lot of orb clearing potential by removing tempests and condi ps.

Sab: I honestly don’t know how good condi ranger is at doing cannons, but I feel like burst is better than condi for those. It might be a little more difficult to clear turrets, but I don’t think it’ll be too bad. Condi can speed up the time on the last champ quite nicely.

Sloth: Moving around a bunch makes me question the damage. At least one ranger in each group would need to bring Protect Me to account for the lack of Gale Song from eles. The cc bar is kinda big so everyone would have to pull their weight.

Trio: This should work fine.

Matty: Moves around a lot. Not easy to flank. Without tempests or condi ps your rangers might have to specifically target icy patches.

Escort: I’m not your puppy.

KC: Condi is just bad on this fight and tempests are amazing.

Xera: You wouldn’t have ranged clearing ability.

Those are just some things to think about before jumping in to this comp. However reading the OP, it doesn’t seem like you’re trying to prove that this is better than the meta. It seems like you made an alternative that can also get the job done even if a little less optimal. For that goal I think you were very successful.

I think this is a good comp for groups that find themselves short on warriors and with a surplus of rangers.

Some notes about your dps comparison:

• If in an all condi group, Condi PS can take Burning Arrows instead of EA for a 1-2k dps increase.
• Condi Ranger dps benchmarks were done with Banner of Strength which gives 170 condi damage.

I plan on taking a closer look at your post later because I find it very interesting, but I’d imagine the dps is more equal than you originally suggested.

Edit: Looks like you accounted for lack of buffs somehow, so disregard that bullet.

If you really want to optimize things, you could aim for 2255 precision. When you add banner of discipline and spotter from a ranger, that will put you at 80% crit chance, so you’ll be at 100% with fury. On my warrior I do this by having assassin’s helm and legs, but I have ascended weapons which makes my numbers a bit different. If you already have zerk, it’s probably not worth switching things up as you gain very little.

If you’re using a sigil of perception you definitely won’t need extra precision. However I’d favor a sigil of bloodlust over that.

I feel like a lot of the advice here has been a little on the pvp side of things, and I’d like to add a bit more pve perspective. In pve, people usually try to burst down mobs so fast that they don’t have an opportunity to do enough damage to kill you. Because of this, increasing your and your group’s damage is much more important than the survive you might take in pvp.

Strength gives you 25 stacks of might and a 20% damage modifier. In terms of pure damage, this is your most important trait line and I would be very hesitant to give it up.

Tactics is what makes people want warriors. It lets you share out all the might you generate to allies so that your whole group gets might. It also gives EA which is a nice dps boost.

Berserker is another huge dps boost. It also gives you access to more skills which gives you more versatility. Headbutt is an amazing cc and your primal bursts are also great.

If you want to fit in Discipline, you’re going to have to deviate from these accepted trait lines. The more you deviate the less accepted your build will be.

Here is why I don’t think you should bring Defense. When you enter a high level fractal people will be expecting you to be running highly offensive builds. Your friend the glass cannon ele is going to charge into the mobs expecting to maybe go down, but to rally before a fractal avenger can stake them. If you take Defense then you’ll be a lot less squishy but that won’t matter when your glass cannon allies die.

Essentially, unless it is critical to your playstyle and enjoying the gameplay, take the offensive option. Your original post says that Discipline is critical to your playstyle, so by all means take it, but limit your deviation from meta as much as possible while still having a build you find fun to play.

I suggest one of two options:

1. Strength/Discipline/Berserker: This would be a selfish damage build that doesn’t provide group support outside of banners. You can run this if you’re ok with being selfish and want personal dps or if there is another warrior in the party.

2. Tactics/Discipline/Berserker: This would be a group support build that doesn’t have that great of personal dps. In order to make up for the loss of Forceful Greatsword you would need a sigil of strength to generate might.

I saw some people suggest DotE in Discipline. Don’t take that because most enemies in pve don’t have many boons. Take Inspiring Battle Standard in fights without much condition pressure and Brawler’s Recovery when there is.

If you find yourself needing more defense, in pve it is best to get that from utility skills and food. Mango Pies are a great food for extra survive as they give you health over time. You can drop one banner (keep discipline over strength) in favor of a defensive utility skill like Endure Pain or Signet of Stamina.

I hope this helps

If you like attunement swapping, I’d suggest a fresh air build. Look at http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Tempest_-_Fresh_Air_DPS for the meta version and modify as you want to fit your playstyle.

In case you’re not familiar with the trait, Fresh Air recharges your air attunement whenever you crit. This build allows you to easily drop into another attunement to do a few skills and then go back into air without losing much dps.

Generally, your goal will be to kill things before they have a chance to kill you, so zerk gear is best like what it says on that build. If you find you need more survive, I recommend bringing a utility skill like arcane shield to keep you alive longer. It is pretty squishy so you will have to be good with dodging and other active defense.

Hope this helps

Well technically it has been significantly less than forever.

Last week: Oh wow I didn’t get anything from fractals. Anet must have nerfed drop rates.

Today: Oh wow I got two Raider’s armor boxes and a zerk accessory in one day. Anet must have buffed drop rates.

3 years ago in probability class: I’m never going to need this, I’ll just take a nap. Zzzzzzz

This app will make your phone part of a botnet with the purpose of DDOSing qT during record runs.

Here are a few tips:

1. Have your chronos pull in the slublings as often as possible without killing whoever is eating. This is easier if you hold the Sloth close to the middle instead of toward the edge. By pulling them in you’ll keep their numbers low so they don’t pressure you down.

2. For poisons, if you drop them on the wall you should still have room against the opposite wall when you come back around. Have your slublings eat wider and slower so that you have more room to move around. The first and second volatiles should only be a few seconds away from despawning by the time you get to shroom 4.

3. Do not walk on the green stuff. Keep the sloth well ahead of the green stuff. You want to stay in a position where if you go down there will be plenty of time to res before the green spawns on top of you. Also make sure everyone gets a stunbreak from the fear.

4. Projectile destruction. Druids have sublime conversion. Necros have cpc. These protect from the slubs. Necros also can epi bounce which is useful for some groups that have difficulty pulling adds. Don’t epi your slub though.

That’s all I’ve got off the top of my head.
GLHF

I don’t have much pvp experience, so all of the following is from a pve perspective (raids, fractals, dungeons, open world).

If you plan on doing raids, I recommend elementalist. It doesn’t have to tank or heal, but is still very useful, which is helpful when learning that gamemode. Mesmer is also useful, but much more difficult and critical to success, so it’s hard to learn raids on.

For fractals, all of those are good. Fractals are much less restrictive on what classes you plan on playing, so you can succeed on any.

In general pve, once again you can succeed on anything. However many mesmer builds are focused on buffing allies so you might do less damage on that class when running around by yourself.

Mesmer has a couple good builds. The build I’m most familiar with is a chronomancer buffing build. Basically you give a bunch of quickness and alacrity to your allies. This is amazing in instanced content like raids and fractals. You also have the option of condi mesmer. This build does good damage at the cost of giving up your support abilities. Condi mesmer is much less useful in raids, but can still be fun in fractals and open world. One of the great things about mesmer is the ability to pull mobs together with your focus to more easily kill them.

Guard is a powerful dps class that has more survivability than an elementalist due to the heavy armor. You can also provide some unique utility in the form of blocks for your group, reflects, pulls, etc. This is less desirable in raids, but great in fracs and open world.

Ele is the highest dps class in the game, making it great everywhere. However it is very squishy. Playing ele you have to really be able to dodge attacks and actively avoid damage. It is highly desirable in raids, and also good in fracs and open world. If you want an alt build, heal ele is actually pretty good. It doesn’t give the buffs that other healers can give, but a heal ele can really carry a fractal group.

As for aesthetics, they all have their own. I personally like ele a lot with the elemental theme. I’m not a huge fan of a lot of the light armor on males though. Heavy armor tends to look more ‘cool’ which is what I usually go for.

How do you cleave down adds with the wall tactic? In my experience the difficulty of the fight is directly proportional to how many adds there are. Being along the wall would make it much more difficult to kill adds.

The four biggest classes in the meta right now are chrono, druid, tempest, and warrior. Pretty much every group will want these on all fights. The meta composition is two identical subgroups, each with a chrono, druid, warrior, and two tempests. What people are looking for largely depends on the pool of people they already have, but all of these will show up in the lfg regularly.

Chrono is difficult to play and can carry groups. Because of the difficulty, it is common for people to not have it available, and so they will need to pug it. However, if a group does have some people that can play it, they will likely make their friends play chrono and pug a less critical role like a dps.

Druid falls into a very similar category as chrono, except I think a lot more people have one available. Druids can carry groups, so if someone has a friend that they know can play druid well, they’ll do that over pugging the druid.

Warrior is easier to play than the others (although it is a lot more difficult to be really good at it than people give it credit for). Because of this, lots of people have warriors, so they are less likely to need one from lfg.

Tempest is by far the easiest to find groups for. Groups will take more eles than any other class so there is a demand for them. Also, groups are much more inclined to pug a dps role than tank or healer. This is what I geared on my second account because I knew it would be easier to find groups.

For the groups that I raid with regularly, we will sometimes end up a person or two short. After we exhaust our friends lists, we’ll use lfg to find more. I think we always look for a dps because our members are multiclass enough where we can cover the other roles.

The best thing you can do to consistently get into groups is to have multiple classes available. Only having one is very restrictive and will probably cause you a problem if you ever want to be part of a static group.

My recommendation is to start out with ele (as long as you enjoy it). This will give you the challenge you want, but is not in a critical role, which will give you time to learn boss mechanics. Once you have some experience with all the bosses, then pick up druid or chrono. This will diversify the roles you can fill which is invaluable to groups.

zoomborg.9462:

Mind you mid tactic requires optimal dps otherwise it can turn into a clusterkitten. I just do wall when with pugs just to be safe.

Can you clarify how wall requires less dps? I find mid to be much safer because you are much more able to cleave down the adds. Fewer adds means less pressure in the later stages of the fight.

I’ve attached a photo where I mocked up the strategy I like doing in my groups.

Key:
Red – first shroom required
Pink – first shroom optional
Green – second shroom required
Light Green – second shroom optional
Blue – third shroom required
Light Blue – third shroom optional
Yellow – fourth shroom required
Orange – eaten by first shroom on first go-around, and fourth on the second. Required for both.

The optional shrooms can be taken for a variety of reasons. Some allow the next slub to eat without walking on poison. Some allow teammates more room to maneuver and drop off bombs.

This strategy has people stay in slub longer than some other strats. This means there is a longer period without one of your dps and where you can’t epi. However the tradeoff is that you eat a lot of space giving you places to go when dodging mechanics, so I think it is generally safer.

A really big thing is do NOT eat past your allotted section. If you eat too far, then the poison will catch up to you a lot faster in that next section. Also keep this in mind when deciding the order that you eat your shrooms. The ones you eat first will respawn first, so a lot of the times it is better to eat the shrooms in the middle last or close to it.

Enchanted Reward Boosters are meant to condense all the boosters we accumulate into one item to take up less space, but they don’t give the ability to select karma. I didn’t realize this way back when I made mine, and now don’t have any karma boosters. It would be really nice to have for all these Wintersday things that give lots of karma.

Joxer.6024:

Fluffy.1932:

The ideal comp right now generally is 2 mesmers, 4 eles, 2 ps, and 2 druids. The ideal comp before the last balance patch was 1 mesmer, 1 rev, 4 eles, 2 ps, and 2 druids.

That’s the problem…..It should read as 1 tank/support, 1 dps/support, 4 dps, 2 dps/support/banners,etc. , 2 dps/heals.

Basically what I am trying to say is that the “4 eles” needs to be 4 dps, that’s all. And don’t say it can’t be done or whatever because it does get done, people have such a “meta mentality” that they can’t see past anything else.

I absolutely believe that it can be done, and even should be done in some situations. On many bosses, you want to get some sort of other utility out of your dps though. On Gors and KC, the large hitbox makes staff ele better dps in theory, but that’s only if you are very good with your rotations. Thieves frequently out dps the eles because their rotation is simpler. However, on Gors you still need orb clear, and ele is really good at that.

On Sab, both thief and ele can teleport and are thus good for cannons. However it is very valuable to be able to dps Karde and the turrets at the same time, for which you need a large aoe like air overload. Thief would have to stop dps on the champ to dps a turret.

On Gors, aoes to kill slubs are valuable. More importantly, you want Gale Song to break people’s fear after break phases. You could have everybody deal with it themselves, or have your druid run Protect Me or something, but that is more risky.

On Matty, you need fire to clear icy patches which makes eles valuable. You could clear with condi warriors, but then you have less cc from your warriors. Once again you can make an adjustment to accommodate a change if you really want.

This is all to explain why people tend to stick with meta. There are lots of reasons to bring specific classes to fill roles and if you make a change, then you have to deal with certain mechanics in a different way.

All that being said, you absolutely can run off-meta comps. I run with a team that gets a full clear with 1 chrono, 1 heal ele, 1 druid, 2 ps, a dps ele, and a combination of ele, necro, and other dps to fill the last slots. I encourage people to try playing things that are off-meta, but you need to be aware of all the subtle differences that causes.

The reason people ask for specific classes is because in this game it’s not just about the general role you’re filling. Everybody has secondary tasks are roles they fill in a fight. A dps class isn’t just there for dps. Warriors are not just there for buffs. Druids are not just there for heals. Chronos are not just there for tanking. Whether this is a good design or not I’m not going to voice an opinion or not.