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The difference between Ascended gear and Exotic gear, I’m told, isn’t a really huge one.
Most guides I’ve read say Exotic is perfectly fine to go on.
OK, so it’s just a case of mechanics that don’t work.
Got it – ignore the shield and just keep strafing, like I was before the shield went up. Thanks.
Thief is a pretty quick leveling job due to how much quickness and movement they can use.
My Sylvari Elementalist is hands-down my favorite of all my characters.
Hey guys.
I’m trying to down Mordremoth for the first time. [SPOILERS]
And you fight the ghosts or whatever of a couple characters before fighting the dragon. I got Eir first – her fight was a pain, died a lot at first. But by running around the outside ring in a circle while casting AOEs, I finally managed to whittle her down.
Second fight – I got Canach. Things went OK up until my ally Canach does his shield thing to help defeat corrupted Canach. I read up on the strategy on the Wiki and apparently, when he does the shield – you go stand in or behind it. Then the boss’s attacks will be reflected back at it causing damage.
This didn’t really work out in practice at all.
I’d go in the shield and the boss would still drop his AOE bombs on me and it would still kill me. I’m in the shield – and his bombs are still killing me.
What gives? Am I missing something here?
I agree you should play several classes to level 30 or so to see which one you like. Leveling in this game is stupid-fast. So it’s not a big deal to start over.
But if you just want a starting point, why not go with Warrior?
Heavy armor means a lot of survivability, you have a lot of good offense for leveling quickly, they’re really easy to learn, and Warriors are currently mandatory in raid-compositions where they are used to stack Might on the party.
Lots of weapon options to play with too. For what you’re looking for, you might as well make one of your main characters a Warrior and see how you like it.
I’d think that you wouldn’t be able to choose between the three until you’ve tested all three in PvP.
You’ve got multiple character slots – so try all three.
Was just listening to WoodenPotatoes – a Guild Wars 2 YouTube-er. He was talking about an experiment he did taking a fresh account from level zero to 80, trying to simulate what it’s like for a new player to get from start all the way to the level where they could possibly do raids if they wanted.
He said the Thief is definitely his pick for fastest leveling experience. Not only can you rig a thief with a constant 25% movement boost, but dagger mainhand has a leap attack ability that can cover a lot of ground really quickly. And if you keep a shortbow as your alternate weapon, that has a teleport ability that can really speed up map travel.
Combat is really fast and damaging too – with the thief teleporting all over the place to each enemy. If feels tons faster to me than my warrior, guardian, and mesmer characters.
So, I learned that there is some loot you get – like globs of ectoplasm and shiny baubles (I guess) and other stuff that sells for a fair amount. I started thinking that maybe I could be making more gold that way (and since I can’t seem to break 100 gold in this game – usually more like 50 gold total most of the time – this seems important).
But my item storage still isn’t maxxed out on these valuable items, and the completionist in me keeps wanting to max out stuff before selling it off on the TP.
The stage I’m at in the game is I’ve got all exotic gear, with an ascended necklace. I’m working my way through the Heart of Thorns story line for the first time, with an eye on doing Ember Bay, and Crack in the Ice content after that. I’ve started a legendary weapon path (but I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting serious about THAT for a long time yet), but I’m mainly aiming for a couple ascended weapons for my main character. Not really interested in getting ascended armor right now, since I’m only doing low level fractal content at best.
One of my personal goals is unlocking as much armor and weapon skins as reasonably possible, getting into dungeons (which I haven’t run much yet), and messing around with low level fractals. I’d also like to unlock any armor sets available in HoT if I can.
At present, it’s looking like I’m not going to even unlock the top racial vendor armor sets at the rate I’m going.
Should I be selling the ectos? Or hoarding them?
Why not just take the phonetic sounds and split them into two words with alternate spellings?
Like…
Raeff Lessia, for example.
Or Raf Le Sia, and so forth…
You might try looking at the recruitment forum here:
I appreciate all the good input on this thread.
Here’s a report on some stuff I tried out since I wrote the OP.
First I tried acquiring some exotic Soldier’s armor fitted with Superior Runes of the Elementalist (because they were cheap and I’m not going Strength or Scholar runes on a test build). About three of my guildies announced on Discord that they were going to do a farm run on Silverwastes, so I felt like that would be a good place to test the build out. Still running a basic staff ele setup that I’d been running all along.
Things went alright, and I didn’t see marked performance issues, though I’m sure my DPS was lower. At the southeast fort we dropped down the pit and tried to kill Mordrem boss that runs in a circle around the tunnel plowing people down. The particular group I was with, I guess we didn’t destroy the poison pods, so we all wiped.
Eventually, we managed to get the final meta-event for Silverwastes triggered with the three paths. We took middle path and managed to push it to that boss where you have to stand behind him when he does his special attack or get stunned. We had a lot of trouble with this mechanic as a group, and the event failed. Died repeatedly.
My takeaway lesson from the experience is that my armor might have been giving me some buffer against minions and trash mobs in the Silverwastes, but when it came to big boss mechanics, Soldiers is essentially just as squishy as Berserkers. There’s little noticeable difference between the two in boss fights. You just have to learn the mechanics, or die – end of story.
Or get carried by your group, I guess…
Another thing I decided to try out after the Silverwastes run was switch from staff to dagger/warhorn for a “fresh air” build. I’ve been playing staff for a long time now, and I realized I was doing that mainly because it’s a simple skill rotation. You basically camp fire until you want the occasional skill from another skillset – like air for travel speed, or earth for the elemental guardian. Basically, I was being lazy and the gameplay had gotten stale anyway.
I also realized that even with dodges and burning retreat(which I use all the time), staff might not be the most damage-mitigation focused build out there. It kind of thrives off you just standing there and doing your DPS rotation against enemies that also don’t move much.
So, I looked up some Fresh Air builds and I’m currently trying those out, farming extra mastery points in Dredgehaunt Cliffs and other zones. So far, it’s kind of fun (“Lightning Orb – where have you BEEN all my life?”). I’m also finally able to use the Tempest skills that I didn’t have available as a free-to-player.
I suspect that utilizing damage mitigation skills in the dagger builds might tap me into more survivability than just slapping Soldiers gear on a staff ele did. I’m going to experiment with it, take the build into Tangled Depths (next stop on my personal story), and see if I get kicked around by the mobs down there.
Trial and error I guess. Staff might have been a problem because it was preventing that testing.
I got tired of it when I first ran a character through all the personal story options of Vigil, Order of Whispers, and Durmond Priory – where EVERY LAST ONE of the mentors dies at the same spot on Claw Island.
I was kind of like – “Really? This is just lazy story writing.”
Every time it happens, it feels like the writers are just making a cheap throwaway attempt to make you have feelings about the story.
Then go mow the lawn, or do your homework, or go play World of Tanks or something.
All of those options sound more useful than telling us about your feelings.
I mean, it’s not like you can’t do other content in this game if you want a challenge.
I’d suggest another way of looking at this.
What if the goal of the Living Story boss fights were not to make the fights challenging, but rather to make them INTERESTING?
If the fights were interesting, would anyone really care if they weren’t challenging?
I only got HoT in November 2016. The way it worked out, when Chapter 3 released, I still hadn’t even completed Auric Basin on the HoT storyline, let alone Bloodstone Fen or Ember Bay.
I logged into Lake Doric out of order because I wanted to try being a part of the big party, if you know what I mean. I figured it would be nice to try the map when there were tons of players actually there, since the achievements seem to be harder when less people are on the map.
That’s why I arrived at Lake Doric without some needed skills.
I’m not some whining sissie who wants the game to be easier.
I played Eve Online for two years in a Wormhole PvP corporation preying on PvE carebear players for crying out loud.
I think Caudecus isn’t really that well designed, and that the fact that “Ancient Magic” mastery doesn’t unlock upon entering Lake Doric is a real oversight on the devs’ part. But really none of that would matter much if they’d just put an anvil in the barn.
I don’t want everything handed to me on a silver platter.
I’m not really even asking for another nerf to the Caudecus fight. I think you could argue for such a nerf and argue that Living Story isn’t really the place for those challenging fights you want. But I’m not the one asking for a nerf.
I’ve accepted that to a certain degree, I’m just not as skilled at the game. I died thirty times and the whole thing was incredibly discouraging and not-fun. But even that wouldn’t have made me come here and complain.
Part of it was also because I don’t have the Counter Magic skill – which is locked in Bloodstone Fen until I decide to do that content. Lack of that skill made the fight almost undoable. Try doing the fight without using Counter Magic and tell me how it goes. That’s also not what I was complaining about.
The only reason I complained about the fight was that all my armor broke after 5 minutes in the chandelier room due to all the times I’d died getting to Caudecus. Without gear or any of the stats that gear provides, you simply get one-shot – BY EVERYTHING.
The only complaint I have about this instance that I feel is worth voicing is asking that ArenaNet put a freaking ANVIL in the barn. The end.
If I’d had an anvil, I could have managed through Caudecus on my own and maybe even coped with at least half the fight mechanics. Without one, the fight was literally impossible for me.
I’ve only owned HoT since November 2016. I have all of Season 3 chapters available banked away.
While we’re on the topic – for the benefit of new players – do you have to unlock the Heart of Thorns maps in order to get to Bloodstone Fen?
Well, I still have a lot of HoT maps to complete for the first time. I’ve noticed I’m a bit squishier on those events than I’d like. Maybe I’ll get myself an open world roaming set and save my Berserkers stuff for when my guildmates want to have an evening Fractale run (where I haven’t found Berserkers too problematic).
Thanks for the observations.
I went for Berserkers, because that’s what just about everyone on the forums and YouTube says you should go for.
But… now that I think about it… aren’t they just saying that because they are min-maxing for ultimate damage output and speed-clears on Fractale content?
It makes me wonder if maybe I shouldn’t be going for a different set of stats. Maybe “Knights” or “Valkyrie”…
So essentially all your complaints about being instakilled are because of counter magic. If you don’t use that skill, he does a massive attack on you, and it’s not avoidable by any means whatsoever. Go get that unlocked, bind your special action key to a good button, and then try the fight again. I’m extremely curious to find out how you do at that point.
No, like I said – even the sniper trash mobs were mopping the floor with me. It wasn’t just Counter Magic.
Also, I was asking for an anvil in the barn to repair armor. Caudecus is hard when all your armor is broken.
Idk, that just seems like such an odd complaint. Were you mostly having trouble with the first phase or the second phase?
I had trouble with all of it. If you read my earliest comments on this thread, I detail it. Usually by the time I got to first-phase Caudecus in the fireplace room, all my equipment was damaged from dying repeatedly. Caudecus usually managed to break all my armor completely by the time he went down. So I went into Caudecus phase 2 pretty much naked.
That’s why I said they need to put an anvil in the barn – for scrubs like me who just want to complete the story, but aren’t CC, dodging, mechanics-savvy, survival masters like apparently a lot of other people here are.
Thanks for the observations.
I went for Berserkers, because that’s what just about everyone on the forums and YouTube says you should go for.
But… now that I think about it… aren’t they just saying that because they are min-maxing for ultimate damage output and speed-clears on Fractale content?
It makes me wonder if maybe I shouldn’t be going for a different set of stats. Maybe “Knights” or “Valkyrie”…
So essentially all your complaints about being instakilled are because of counter magic. If you don’t use that skill, he does a massive attack on you, and it’s not avoidable by any means whatsoever. Go get that unlocked, bind your special action key to a good button, and then try the fight again. I’m extremely curious to find out how you do at that point.
No, like I said – even the sniper trash mobs were mopping the floor with me. It wasn’t just Counter Magic.
Also, I was asking for an anvil in the barn to repair armor. Caudecus is hard when all your armor is broken.
(edited by Irensaga.6935)
Hi, my main is Elementalist. My other level 80 characters are a Mesmer and a Thief.
Every guide I run into online it’s always Berserkers gear for everything. I just went along with that and outfitted my Elementalist in full exotic Berserkers gear, with full “Superior Rune of the Flame Legion” (because I can’t really afford to go full Runes of the Scholar).
But running the final boss fight solo in Lake Doric made me doubt this choice. I got slaughtered, repeatedly. Even sniper mobs were one-shotting me. Part of the problem was I didn’t have the right masteries unlocked. But I also think a lot of my weakness to getting one-shot was due to my Berserker’s gear.
It seems like Berserkers is basically a thing for min-maxers. People who are experienced at all the game mechanics, are good at dodging, know how to use all their abilities to squeeze survivability out of their character… People who want to speed-clear dungeons and fractales – where everyone knows the mechanics and the only thing an Elementalist should be worrying about is pumping out maximum DPS.
But that’s not exactly me. I’m purely a casual player. I’ve played about a year as a Free-to-Play account, and only bought HoT last November (2016). I haven’t even run through the story-modes of the dungeons yet. I think I’m not terrible at the game mechanics, dodging, not standing in red circles, and so on. But I’m not the sort of player that cares about speed-clear farming runs at this point.
And even if I ran Fractales, it seems to me that I’m going to need more of a safety margin than Berserkers gives while I learn the mechanics and get used to the whole thing.
I also have a pretty understanding guild full of mature people I can run group content with who won’t care if I’m not min-maxxing.
Also, I’ve heard that if you take Berserkers into PvP content, you’re just going to get murdered.
What do you guys think? Should I give up on the Berserkers idea for now, and run Knights instead or something else? Do you carry more than one set of armor for different stuff?
Thanks for the observations.
I went for Berserkers, because that’s what just about everyone on the forums and YouTube says you should go for.
But… now that I think about it… aren’t they just saying that because they are min-maxing for ultimate damage output and speed-clears on Fractale content?
It makes me wonder if maybe I shouldn’t be going for a different set of stats. Maybe “Knights” or “Valkyrie”…
OK, so I tried solo-ing Caudecus one last time last night on my staff Ele.
I took the advice about running Earth attunement for toughness and Water for healing, and Fire only when I want to burn stuff down fast. There wasn’t much change from before. I died about 30% less than before, but I still died rapidly to sharpshooter trash mobs in the explosives room, repeatedly to the Jade Bow, and took multiple deaths from the Veteran Hound and Veteran Sharpshooter. I was dodging, using shields, healing, summoning Rock Golem… didn’t matter. I was being pasted in five seconds flat by all kinds of stuff. By the time I reached Caudecus fireplace room in his house, all my equipment was damaged.
I started the Caudecus fight and stayed alive a while, but when he targeted me, I had no “Counter Magic” skill unlocked – so he’d knock me flat on my back. I took multiple deaths, my equipment started breaking. By the time the FIRST Caudecus fight was over, I was half naked.
I decided “screw it” and entered the portal anyway. It was there I realized the REAL Caudecus fight everyone has been complaining about that I hadn’t even gotten to yet.
This fight was ridiculous. I ran the room in a circular pattern in Earth Attunement grabbing Bloodstone and chucking it at Caudecus. He’d jump on me and target me with something and I’d get knocked down an killed. I didn’t even have a chance. I was literally being one-shot. I’d be up for five seconds and then BOOM – dead in one second. Restart from checkpoint, through the portal, try furiously to dodge and BOOM – dead in one second. Restart from checkpoint, portal to the room, this time manage to stay alive for five or ten seconds – BOOM – one-shot again. I wasn’t even going into downed-state. I was just getting knocked out dead and offered the option of restarting.
It was the most miserable experience I’ve ever had in this game. I think I died thirty times before complaining in guild chat – whereupon two of my experienced guildmates (veterans of the game) kindly offered to help me out.
They told me to invite them to group, then log out and repair and restart the story instance.
Night and day difference. I have no clue what they were doing, but they were burning the Jade Bow down FAST. Same with the Hound and the mobs and all of it.
When people come on to this thread and report “gee, I had no trouble with this instance” I believe them. They probably know something I don’t about breakbar management, dodging, patterns, stability, buffs and who knows what else.
I try to dodge, I try to use one or two breakbar skills, I try to use my shielding ability, I went on Dulfy and copied a staff Ele build. I got all my equipment to exotic level, made sure it was all Berserkers, and made sure to put good gold level power-boosting runes on all my gear (matching of course). I did my homework, I’m not an idiot.
But… I’m obviously not anywhere near the level of some of the really good players in this game. I don’t know… maybe their ascended gear made a difference. Maybe having the “Counter Magic” skill would have made a big difference… But I was even dying instantly to trash mobs.
I’m super grateful to my guildmates for helping me out and downing this chapter. But at the same time, it was an incredibly demoralizing experience.
Underwater combat may not be fine-tuned as much as the rest of combat. But it’s just fine, quite frankly. Underwater combat is better in this game than most other MMOs. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. And the developers being embarrassed about it is just silly.
Hiding from underwater content is also not particularly useful either.
I’m fine with the drained lake for now. But continuing to hide from underwater content just because the devs feel insecure about it isn’t going to be a great move in my opinion.
That’s nice.
So you must be a better player than me.
And I really don’t care.
Is the consensus that without the Counter Magic special skill this fight is unwinnable?
I, too, only recently got HOT and have not unlocked any special skills yet.
I got to C once pre-nerf on my Mesmer and gave up after being repeatedly one-shot in my skivvies (I forgot about the 17 repair canisters in the bank).
If the special skill is required, I’m not going to waste my time again until I can get it.
No, if you read my comments – I won the Caudecus fight without the counter skill. I died to the point that all my equipment was ready to break, but I downed Caudecus.
Then I went upstairs to complete the letters acheivement, and my computer DC-ed on me, leaving me literally head-desking.
It’s possible, but you either have to use repair cannisters – a gemstore item – or wind up pretty much naked by the end of the fight.
And it’s a horribly not-fun experience without that skill.
It’d be nice if they’d put a regular meta event that takes you to these points of interest. Like the maw event in Silverwastes or something. And incentive for enough players to show up, and maybe enough NPCs to make it happen.
One thing I found – with me dying constantly – was that Demi, Anise, and Cannach all do quite a bit of damage themselves and are really durable – so even if you die, you can still sort of wait for them to grind the boss down for you.
That said, the boss mechanics and the toughness and the constant one-shot deaths are not the biggest problem.
The biggest problem is all the armor damage you accumulate in this instance – to the point that you start losing pieces of gear.
PUT AN ANVIL IN THE BARN!
It really needs to happen.
Haishao, that explains it.
Ancient Magics is locked for me. When I mouse over it, it says I have to go to Ember Bay or Bloodstone Fen to unlock it.
Nuts…. like I said, I only bought HoT in November. I only just barely cleared the Verdant Brink map.
No fifth downed state skill for me yet I guess.
I thought you meant the special ability that people used to have trouble with during this mission, which is counter magic. The 5th downed state is in this mastery page too but it’s the last one at the bottom. Spectral Aid.
Naw, I was just confused. The special ability – counter magics is also under Ancient Magic masteries – so I can’t get that either.
Looks like I have to either blow a couple more repair canisters, or just give up on Head of the Snake for now and go work on Bloodstone Fen.
Except that I think you really need your glider masteries working to use that map well… so I’m probably off to Auric Basin instead.
Or you can ask for help. If you’re on a US server, I’d be happy to run it with you.
Can you bring grouped people into the instance with you?
I can see this becoming an issue in the future, after Season 3 is over, when a new player, for whatever reason, decides to unlock some old chapters by paying gems for them and purchases Head of the Snake without purchasing the one for Bloodstone Fen. He or she will probably run into the same problem I’ve run into if ArenaNet doesn’t do something about it.
Haishao, that explains it.
Ancient Magics is locked for me. When I mouse over it, it says I have to go to Ember Bay or Bloodstone Fen to unlock it.
Nuts…. like I said, I only bought HoT in November. I only just barely cleared the Verdant Brink map.
No fifth downed state skill for me yet I guess.
I thought you meant the special ability that people used to have trouble with during this mission, which is counter magic. The 5th downed state is in this mastery page too but it’s the last one at the bottom. Spectral Aid.
It sounds like Irensaga doesn’t have either… and it requires visiting Bloodstone Fen or Ember Bay to unlock it at all.
This sounds like a bit of an oversight on ArenaNet’s part: if they’re going to keep episodes locked behind a gemwall, it should be possible to pick it up at any arbitrary point and get the mastery you absolutely have to have, in this case being Counter Magic. It seems that they might have realised this with Episode 2, since visiting Ember Bay will unlock it, but they’ve neglected to consider that regarding Episode 4 (I don’t recall Counter Magic coming up in Episode 3, although I may have forgotten something). Visiting Lake Doric really should unlock the track if Ember Bay does. This should probably be brought to ArenaNet’s more direct attention so they can make Counter Magic at least more generally available.
Relating to the present problem: Irensaga, when precisely did you get HoT? Episode 3 released on November 21, so if you played before that, you should have access to Episode 2, which has Ember Bay. From the tooltip you’re getting, going there should allow you to unlock the mastery, which is all but required to survive here.
I purchased HoT November of 2016 (maybe October). Before that I’d been free-to-play for all of 2016.
So I do have Chapters 1, 2, and 3 of this season banked in my Story Journal and available to start whenever I want to. I think that’s Season 3 right? Season 2 chapters (like Scarlet’s War) are before my time, and locked behind a gemstore paywall.
So, if I want to be optimized for Caudecus, essentially, I have to get counter magic – which is in either Ember Bay or Bloodstone Fen, not sure which. I’ve heard Bloodstone Fen for sure. But from what I’ve seen of reviews of that map, gliding is a huge part of it, and it looks like it would be a pain to run without my extended gliding mastery unlocked – which I don’t have yet.
So I’d have to go to Auric Basin or something to grind out the gliding mastery, so I can go to Bloodstone Fen and get my Ancient Magic mastery unlocked, so I can properly kill Caudecus in Lake Doric.
Or I can just blow through my limited supply of Repair Cannisters and get Caudecus over with now.
Decisions…
Haishao, that explains it.
Ancient Magics is locked for me. When I mouse over it, it says I have to go to Ember Bay or Bloodstone Fen to unlock it.
Nuts…. like I said, I only bought HoT in November. I only just barely cleared the Verdant Brink map.
No fifth downed state skill for me yet I guess.
I thought you meant the special ability that people used to have trouble with during this mission, which is counter magic. The 5th downed state is in this mastery page too but it’s the last one at the bottom. Spectral Aid.
Naw, I was just confused. The special ability – counter magics is also under Ancient Magic masteries – so I can’t get that either.
Looks like I have to either blow a couple more repair canisters, or just give up on Head of the Snake for now and go work on Bloodstone Fen.
Except that I think you really need your glider masteries working to use that map well… so I’m probably off to Auric Basin instead.
Haishao, that explains it.
Ancient Magics is locked for me. When I mouse over it, it says I have to go to Ember Bay or Bloodstone Fen to unlock it.
Nuts…. like I said, I only bought HoT in November. I only just barely cleared the Verdant Brink map.
No fifth downed state skill for me yet I guess.
I talked to one of the Seraph who talked about this new downed-state skill mastery. But I can’t find it on my masteries tab. So it never got trained. Instead I have a HoT mastery actively training and some pact skill for the rest of the maps.
I don’t know where it is.
Also, what’s this “special action key?”
I saw something flashing above my skill bar – but it was so fast, I didn’t even get a look at it. I don’t even know what key that would be. It seems like it was pretty hard to hit, whatever it was.
Keep in mind I only bought HoT in November 2016, and this is the first living world expansion I’ve actually activated and played. I haven’t played Ember Bay or Crack in the Ice. So I have no basis for comparison with those episodes.
Thanks Weli.
I think that would be all I’d really be “screaming for.” Put an anvil in the barn, and I wouldn’t have anything worth coming onto the forum and complaining about. I’d just suck it up and plough through it.
The fact that your NPC allies are so effective makes the thing doable, even if all you do is die repeatedly. It’s really armor damage that makes the event unplayable for players who aren’t very good, and really frustrating for casuals like me who don’t suck necessarily, but aren’t the most skillful players out there.
For now, I’m trying to leverage use of the different elemental attunements to make my Ele more survivable – which probably isn’t a bad learning experience.
I guess that would be the most important change they could make to the instance right now. Put an anvil in the barn.
And I had all these problems WITHOUT any adds in the room besides Caudecus himself. I don’t think the point of solo living world content is to provide an elite challenge.
It’s to provide a fun event for all the players who paid for the expansion. The end.
If it’s failing to hit that goal in favor of being challenging, then it’s failing in its game design purpose.
And I wouldn’t really care about any of this if ArenaNet just put a freaking anvil in the barn.
Do that, and I wouldn’t have any real complaints worth saying on this forum at all.
I’m not screaming for anything. I’m telling you how it was.
So you didn’t have a problem? Congratulations.
Here’s the REALITY for me.
I’m down to 4 repair cannisters. I don’t have any more of those. I don’t have budget to pay for more of those. And once I’m out of those, that’s pretty much it for me.
You really think I give two straws whether you “didn’t have any issues?”
This isn’t the Nightmare Fractale, or group content, or raid content or any of that other end-game elite skill stuff people do in this game. It’s personal-story kind of stuff. Stuff Arena Net wants all the the players to be able to put down with a little effort. Not just special players like you, who either played a tanky enough class, or were just really skilled, or had lots of gemstore stuff to help out, or all ascended gear, or all the elite builds memorized or whatever it was that made you special enough to “not have any problems.”
(edited by Irensaga.6935)
I hear they nerfed the difficulty of this instance. I never saw the first version. But having run the instance last night after the nerfs – I can still report that this chapter is way too hard for casual players like me.
And go ahead and ask me how fun it was for Caudecus to whip out a pistol without warning and knock me halfway across the room into one of the Mesmer fields 6 times in the same fight for pretty much instant death.
Ok, I’m probably the sort of player who is having trouble with this. I’m not a terrible player, but not a great one either. I’m usually able to do most world bosses without dying much, but I’m known to get pasted to the floor in dungeons for not knowing the mechanics. But this Caudecus chapter is just really nasty, it’s worse than anything I did in Arah as part of my personal story, and worse than any dungeon mechanics I’ve had trouble with.
My main is a staff elementalist. It’s a build I put together for optimal open-world content and burning stuff down really fast – mostly in fire attunement. I didn’t really have any major problems in Lake Doric. It was all fun and interesting. I died during Jade Cannon stuff of course, and the random champion spawns and stuff, but it was all doable sorts of challenges. I have all Exotic Berserkers armor, except for an amulet which is ascended.
Caudecus chapter however kicked my butt repeatedly, from the word go. Right after Anise joins you and you get swarmed with White Mantle in the munitions room. They’d swarm me and kill me in under 5 seconds sometimes. Over time I learned to cope with this pack, and saw better success – but the mobs alone would kill me a couple times usually – that’s two pieces of damaged gear. Then the Veteran Jade Bow comes into that room – good grief, that was terrible. I started to learn to dodge some mechanics, but sometimes he’d focus me and ignore everything else for extended periods of time, and nothing I did kept me alive. My earth golem didn’t keep me alive, my invulnerability didn’t do it, adding my earth wall in addition to the shield didn’t do it. First time I tried him, he killed me a total of 5 times with 5 more damaged pieces of armor.
The torturer guy wasn’t a big deal. I think he killed me once the first time, after that things went fine and he wasn’t any trouble.
The carnival guys in the barn were fine. But then the carnival guys with the Veteran Hound come, and again – two or three deaths, and more damaged equipment. Dealing with a tough boss hound with a breakbar in addition to a powerful veteran sharpshooter type was too much. No matter what I did, the sharpshooter seemed to have it in for me.
Then you get Caudecus in the fireplace room. I died once, respawned from checkpoint, and realized I was half naked – yup, my armor was actually breaking. Realizing, I now didn’t have the benefits of the armor, I threw up my hands and teleported to my Guild Hall for repairs.
I tried the chapter a second time with slightly better, but still similar results – with all my gear damaged by the time I was thinking about Caudecus’ fight. Log out again, repair, try again.
Third time, I got to the barn by the time it was time for dinner and I had to log out, but the third run hadn’t gone any better.
Then I realized I have some of those Instant Armor Repair cannisters – a stack of five. I also heard someone in guild chat talk about how Caudecus is doable with Ele as long as you make use of Earth Attunement for toughness and Water when you need healing. So I entered a fourth time determined to try something different.
Using Earth as my main attunement on mini boss encounters made a significant difference. Using water for healing, and switching to Fire only when I just wanted to burn stuff down fast… It worked OK. But the Jade Bow as still impossible, the Hound was still nasty. I think I died about half as many times this time around…
Keep in mind, that’s still quite a lot of deaths – most of which I didn’t feel like I could do anything about. My gear was still beat up by Caudecus, and I used a precious repair cannister.
I did Caudecus and managed to actually kill him – but I still died so much that I had a full set of damaged armor by the end of the fight. I held off using the repair cannister, because I wanted to explore upstairs for more letters for the achievement before taking the portal downstairs.
This proved fortunate, because just as I cleared all the rooms…. my computer DC-ed.
I stared in disbelief at the crummy thing for a minute, then head-desked, and decided I was done early with this game for the evening. That was Friday – yesterday – evening. It’s past 1PM on a Saturday and I still can’t stomach the idea of going back to the game right now.
I’m thinking of playing World of Tanks today instead. That’s how much this experience sucked.
Again, I don’t claim to be a great player. Obviously I’m not one. But I think I am solidly in the middle of the demographic that Arena Net expects to solo this chapter.
And I’m suggesting that this instance has some problems. It’s not fun to play at all – that’s for sure.
I’ve played World of Warcraft, World of Tanks, Eve Online, Dragon Nest, Echo of Soul, Blade and Soul, Drakensang, Path of Exile, Tree of Savior, Elsword and a couple others.
I’d say yes – GW2 is a very strong solo player experience. It far outclasses solo play in WoW.
I played the game for about a year and a half free-to-play with no guild. The open-world content, the world bosses, random dungeon runs, the LFG tool if you want to run Silverwastes or Verdant Brink or whatever…
Yeah, there’s tons you can do without having a regular group. And it’s a lot less boring running around solo-ing things than in other MMOs.
That’s a shame, I kind of liked how the Revenant generally moved in battle. I may still consider it, just for fun. It’s kind of looking like I’ll want to stick with my Warrior I’ve been leveling. Thanks.
Hey guys.
I’ve been having some trouble settling on a heavy armor class. I’ve got an Elementalist as my main, and really like it. I have the basic Heart of Thorns game, but haven’t paid for extra character slots and don’t plan to any time soon – so my character slots are limited. I’ve played a Guardian and Warrior up to level 60 and thought both were good. I’ve been recently experimenting with a throwaway Revenant character up to level 20 and am liking that as well. But I don’t have room for all of them – just one.
I think I have basic fight mechanics during the leveling process down more or less.
What I want to ask you guys is -
How would you describe and summarize the role of each of these classes in group PvE content? What is the main role and contribution of the Warrior, the Guardian, and the Revenant?
I’m sort of interested in which ones are favored in groups and why… but I’m not really a min-maxxer, so I’m more interested in what each class brings to the table in a dungeon run or fractal (you can tell me about raids too if you like, but I’m a long way away from raiding).
My own observations so far are:
Guardian – sluggish DPS playstyle that feels slow and heavy, but brings a lot of group buffs and shields and stuff
Warrior – all over the place due to the huge amount of weapons, the banners kind of bore me, but look dead-useful for groups – more of a get-in-their-face and hit hard and fast playstyle
Revenant – kind of a combination of the Thief and the Warrior, lots of tricky stealth-like fighting, good at taking down defiance bars.
Anyway – I’d love to know how you guys would sum these classes up. Thanks.
Thanks for the answers.
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