Guild Wars 2

saerni.2584:

A zerker thief can still do incredible damage instantly, upwards of 15-20k depending on enemy armor/boons/etc.

To do even 10k damage, I need to land several attacks and hope they don’t have a cleanse saved up.

I’m also saying that full zerk power doesn’t have to hit me more than a few times to kill me. A thief hitting me with a few autoattacks and shadowshot can take out upwards of half my HP in 1.5 seconds.

If you build glassy you will do a lot of damage. A condi player can always go more glassy with power, precision, condition stats. Same condi bomb but now your enemy also loses 30% of their HP to your opening attack. But, condition players who are often not playing power because they want something different from glass, so they don’t spec it as often.

maybe learn your rotations? When I condi bomb someone running a zerker build, they often don’t have the time to cleanse the condis since many condi cleanses have casting time.

I found marauder/crusaider combo to be pretty close to celestial gameplay with a bit more oomph to dmg

I use rebound when running in wvw with a small party and they need support. It saved my party quite a few times but the heal is terrible imo, especially that you need to time it really well to get any use out of it.

just swap ice bow for aftershock

why viper and not sinister on ele?

bgoodwin.3428:

Oh hell no. Do you know how many times my own guild would kill me!!!!!!!!!!!!

mine does that all the time using other means :/

different traits/utilities could prioritise different damaging condis

saerni.2584:

At most a thief can have around 22k hp with a soldiers/dire build. 22k is nothing compared to what many classes run around with.

that’s almost double of zerker thief’s hp

since different classes have different mechanics, why do you compare hp’s between them?

joneirikb.7506:

They need to find a way to make Condi scale with the number of players (somehow).

Parasitic Contagion

sure

the annoying bit about soloing towers is that you have to build the siege solo as well

Sartharina.3542:

I think that people are just unable to cope with the fact that something that doesn’t kill them instantly is still supposed to kill them. You’re not supposed to be able to clear every condition you take, just as you’re not supposed to be able to block or evade every hit. And just because your character is still moving and fighting doesn’t mean they haven’t taken a lethal blow.

I think that people are just unable to cope with the fact that a buid that doesn’t die instantly can still kill fast. You’re not supposed to be able to live through every situation you walk into, and you’re not supposed to be able to block or tank every hit. Yet your character can do exactly that providing you are not dumb enough to roll power build.

Sarahfull.4930:

otome.2673:

Sarahfull.4930:

Cynz.9437:

I play zerker thief in t4s daily and doing more than fine, never understood whole necro stacking thing – we kill bosses there just as fast with random groups consisting of anything really. Yes, having necro for boon thief is nice, but 1 is more than sufficient, imo.

I also melee most bosses so idk what you are talking about. Especially bosses you named – they are easiest to melee in fact (mai is cone – stabby stabby her in the back, shaman has obvious animations to dodge – drop dat smoke screen in his face, arch – just poke him in the back 24/7). Only bosses i range is like molten duo when my entire team is dead and i have to solo the boss or chaos fractal because boss needs to be kited 24/7.

Oh funny story! As a theif you can steal the invulnerable whiskey from the chaos boss. So while hes channeling his big aoe doom spin and pull ( he does this at 50% then every 18sec) you can drink whiskey right infront of him and laugh as you take nothing.

Or you just do your job as thief and cc this attack..

Yup! That too, let everyone know before hand you’ll call out the breakbar move (copy and paste it) then at 52% hp call that it’s incoming then again after counting to 18 untill hes dead

we had to explain our thief in HoTW yesterday what to do after his comment “thieves are bad at cc”. he wasn’t a new player, some 5k+ ap

look at it from the positive side, it’s +200 power :P

forum bug

Infusion.7149:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Infusion.7149:

Xillllix.3485:

Playing staff elementalist right now in WvW is just the most unpleasant and frustrating experience you can have in this game, or in a MMO.

Nothing hits because of the huge delay between skills, damage is way below what other class can do with much easier means, and even with super high toughness you still get 1-1-1-1 to death before your first skill goes off if you don’t have permanent protection upkeep.

In PvP it’s the same, you’re just good at healing others and there is no build variety. Great job!

Compared to how fun the class was to play on release, this is complete kitten balance work by a team that apparently doesn’t care if in a PvP match with 10 players 8 of them are guardians.

I’m taking another break from this game. See you in 6 months or a year maybe, if the balance team ever actually balance the game instead of destroying the gameplay and build variety.

Had a bit of fun switching class to Revenants and killing other elementalists pressing the “2” key, but then I realized playing classes that I don’t enjoy because my main class is broken is not worth the space on my hard drive.

This is the first time I’m hearing staff elementalists complain about not being useful in WvW.

he said unpleasant and frustrating, which dmg staff ele is. i’ve been playing healbot way more often than dmg now and even guys that organise squad ask for healbots, which are more useful to their squad especially when it’s laggy. I can give up to that heal tick as on pic just by standing around. dmg staff gets evaporated in laggy fights and can’t really do much dmg anyway.

Well if you sit in water attunement on a staff ele you are never going to do much damage. A delayed ice spike is about it. Also it is likely a team comp /coordination issue. If everyone on the enemy team is spamming boons you need boon strips.

Staff ele only does its main damage on fire attunement (lava font / meteor shower). Air attunement is a joke if you’re at staff range and don’t have line of sight, earth attunement is semi-workable if you have condition damage spec (some pieces of celestial/Sinister/etc).

In this boon meta, if you run a tempest with high toughness and auras you’re better off with Dagger+warhorn. IMO save the staff for AoE-ing walls with meteor shower and taking down siege with auto + lava font + meteor shower. With the changes that have conditions damaging siege , condi reaper with staff is stronger for suppressing walls compared to staff ele. The advantage to ele staff is the radius of meteor shower.

i am amazed by your skill to estimate my playstyle

the max i’ve seen was 968 mist/655 regen but that was with the food that gives 200 heal power for 10s on heal skill use

where i can’t have heal efficiency, i got heal power max out including infusions. that with stacks/food can heal 840-870 mist, over 900 only with a little cheat – having ice bow (+180 heal power). it’s rather clunky to use but a nice boost to non wep skill heals.

it’s funny how earlier people shunned healing in wvw, it wasn’t crazy high as now but still high enough to carry a group of people through anything.

Infusion.7149:

Xillllix.3485:

Playing staff elementalist right now in WvW is just the most unpleasant and frustrating experience you can have in this game, or in a MMO.

Nothing hits because of the huge delay between skills, damage is way below what other class can do with much easier means, and even with super high toughness you still get 1-1-1-1 to death before your first skill goes off if you don’t have permanent protection upkeep.

In PvP it’s the same, you’re just good at healing others and there is no build variety. Great job!

Compared to how fun the class was to play on release, this is complete kitten balance work by a team that apparently doesn’t care if in a PvP match with 10 players 8 of them are guardians.

I’m taking another break from this game. See you in 6 months or a year maybe, if the balance team ever actually balance the game instead of destroying the gameplay and build variety.

Had a bit of fun switching class to Revenants and killing other elementalists pressing the “2” key, but then I realized playing classes that I don’t enjoy because my main class is broken is not worth the space on my hard drive.

This is the first time I’m hearing staff elementalists complain about not being useful in WvW.

he said unpleasant and frustrating, which dmf staff ele is. i’ve been playing healbot way more often than dmg now and even guys that organise squad ask for healbots, which are more useful to their squad especially when it’s laggy. I can give up to that heal tick as on pic just by standing around. dmg staff gets evaporated in laggy fights and can’t really do much dmg anyway.

the wait is not that long unless playing at 2am

it can’t be perfect for everyone in every situation. join the fight or ignore and if duellers don’t like being constantly interrupted, they can move elsewhere. they stay there cos people don’t attack them after all

vana.5467:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

elemental bastion isn’t that great even with tons of healing power

You’re right insofar as the sustain from healbot ele comes from a lot of different sources and this is only one of them. However, I don’t think the build would be a thing without the healing from elemental bastion. Between auras on skills and passive procs, it accounts for around 7-9k healing on every engagement with a typical d/f build.

Which is a rather small proportion of the total healing ele does in such a fight. With roughtly 1350hp/s passive heals, that’s covered in less than 7s. one wash the pain away gives same healing to allies on one use, blasting water gives more than one aura, when playing staff, heal from one aa is similar to heal from one aura, dodge gives like double healing than one aura. sure 9k heal per trait per fight looks amazing, unless compared to other traits/skills.

bastion is great for burst heals but it’s far from necessary, i often don’t use it, especially if playing /w. if they’d remove the heal from bastion, nobody would slot it and healer ele would still be awesome.

Jana.6831:

Just go for it.
See, even I as a vanilly D/D thief, without food, without boons with SIGNET OF SHADOWS gasp kill stuff in wvw. Is only bad if it’s bunkers but I heard that isn’t really possible in pvp right now, so with some practice you should have a good time.

why did you post a pic of afk reaper?

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Rubbish. I take SoH for the intrupt more then anything.

it’s self-interupt these days

elemental bastion isn’t that great even with tons of healing power

from my experience, the tier of the server the player plays on has more to do with wxp than what he does. I usually just hop onto any action around, being it a zerg fight, small fight or roaming and occasional chat with an enemy player. Althought it’s not as much true with server linking now, before roaming in gold tier would be just as good in terms of wxp if not better than zerging in T9.

sephiroth.4217:

Junkpile.7439:

ArchonWing.9480:

False dichotomy here.

Have you ever considered that those people might just be taking a break from running around? A lot of people encounter each other roaming and it’s just more convenient to meet up at a predetermined spot rather than just run around aimlessly hoping to get lucky.

Try giving this a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_

It can be useful to hone various skills which can be applied in more practical situations, aka getting better.

In a game that promotes zerging everything, I suppose people that seek some degree of self improvement in a game where the bar can be set quite low are quite the bane of its existence.

I have seen players who are 1 vs 1 monsters, but in real fight they are totally useless. So i could say that 1 vs 1 fights will lower your skill level.

Or you could say big zerg fights have unplayable FPS.

I’ve heard the same thing about me, I die on the first push cause my FPS drops to about 2-4…. Gimmie a duel or small scale fight at 30fps anyday.

it’s other way around for me, I am good in small fights but I totally suck in 1 vs 1, which is quite annoying cos often people ask me to duel them after a small group fight.

RodOfDeath.5247:

If you are a man or independent woman, necromancer.

Good thing is once you arrive at the party you have to stay and fight. You’ll have no escape or stealth, just a lot of yoloing and no fear attitude.

everytime I play necro in wvw, it seems like everyone has infinite immob/stuns

i quite enjoyed the vid

Cecilia.5179:

I’m on the JQ/Mag/FA matchup, and I couldn’t help but notice that there were over a dozen duelers piled up on the side of Stonemist. I don’t play WvW to duel, I play it for skirmishes, so I go run around the map and look for fights. I found about 6 roamers and some stray zerglings. If all of those people who were dueling chose to skirmish instead, the fights tonight would have been great. I don’t mind seeing a small handful of people dueling, but when there’s a small blob of people sitting on a hill beside Stonemist waiting for duels, I can’t help but think that’s why WvW feels so empty.

kill them

do you lurk around the forums just to reply to threads like these?

to me staff now feels clunky just cos of the cd’s nerf, before it was the godly set of awesomeness you can go melee/range anytime, combat mobility is good and out of combat you can always use other weps for a skill or two

minstrel staff ele would work fine but not as backline

worth it only if you like camping water and spamming autos

SoV.5139:

The blow is not telegraphed, or if it is, the party stacked on the mob is making it impossible to see it. Calling it a L2P issue is incorrect when theres no way to counter it. Learn to do what exactly? Not be in the same room? Order an airstrike while still at the barracks?

Sounds like you got frustrated over your party dying at kohler. This boss is the hardest from AC for low level, inexperienced parties because its hard hitting (but not 1 shot) spin shreds people in blues/greens, all while they take a lot of dmg from the adds. You need blocks/stun break/reflects for this boss, with that you can walk away from most of the spin damage and heal (see heals can be useful :P )

Also, the level numbers don’t seem to matter. Level 50 and 60 characters dying over and over in a level 35 dungeon for instance. I get that it scales characters to a specific level depending on dungeon, but being higher level eliminates the “you need to be this big to ride this ride” excuse. In a game that does a lot of things right, it sure got the recovery character part wrong. No need to recover if you have full HP one instant, and dead the next. It takes utility out of the game and makes people spec for damage only.

Depends on what you consider instant, in AC p3, that would be the falling rocks during last boss fight, not kohler, spider queen or lizard bosses’ attacks.

From my experience often running AC with under 80s parties, low level players get one shot because their gear is of low quality and several levels below their current lvl. What you are complaining is not a problem of levels but bad equipment.

A low level party with good gear and experience can completely shred that dungeon.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Okay. So 4 or 5k extra health will mean he gets three shot instead of two shot then.

That little bit of extra health might save you on some rare occasions but proper dodging and skill management will save you a lot more.

Maybe training wheels wasn’t the right description but I stand by the fact that working with less room for error will make it easier to become a better player. You can then reward yourself with a build/gear that is more forgiving even though you’ve now become skilled enough that you don’t necessarily need it.

Also note that I did say “might not want to follow my advice” because I’m aware that it may not work as well for OP as it does for me.

Lol, Thieves have a ton of evades/mobility, Ele’s have a ton of sustain and defensive options and Guards pretty much have perma-blocks with Dragonhunter. They might have low health but their mechanics are what make that acceptable.

Why do you want to rely on health instead of what the profession is giving you with it’s mechanics?

And actually I play a standard Assassin/Berserker Ranger with 16,055 health and if I’m not careful, I die in three to four hits. I’ve got a lot less evades, blinds and mobility than a Thief and I do just fine most of the time.

You don’t seem to make any difference between a particular class with a zerker build and a sustain build.

DPS ele sustain is horrid and their defensive options have long cooldowns and short durations. Other classes have them too.

Zerker thief’s advantage is stealth to lose focus and very good mobility – druids can have very good mobility as well.

DH goes bust once his stuff is on cd’s.

5k extra hp is roughly 50% increase in health pool for a squishy, I don’t understand how you can see this as negligible. all with minimal dmg reduction with marauder.

Sounds to me like you have no idea what playing lowest hp class with zerker gear is like.

Jana.6831:

The 40k while was the enemy was downed – for some reason the damage then is more than usual – so it was about 22k until that guy was downed, the rest doesn’t really matter, does it?

unload is one of the few attacks that when used successively fast enough, the dmg number shown is a total dmg, not for a single skill

Naix.8156:

the existing traits require you to be in combat before they activate.

imo, this would solve most problems with long pre stacked durations on guild groups

any build that can dish out a lot of dmg while being tanky

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

We had multiple mortars firing on one spot (a choke in a broken wall at Veloka) and someone said on map chat he got 120 stacks of burning (maybe he had a lot of resistance to build that much?).

I only got 27 stacks of burning in a very short time and wasn’t standing near the choke for very long (I managed to clear just before I went down).

The shots were coming from their keep so to suggest “just destroy them” isn’t realistic because we’d have to break their outer keep wall to reach them.

Siege humping in general is over powered.

Siege and walls should only be there to delay the fight long enough to get reinforcements – it should not stop fights from occurring.

- ACs are too weak individually but over powered when you build multiple of them (*cough*Yaks Bend*cough*). ACs need to scale their damage based on how many manned ACs in their vicinity so you get diminishing returns for each additional AC you build.

- Mortars need to stack fire slower because it unbalances the PvP too far in one direction.

- Cows need to drain slower. why? -> getting a walls down = fights.

- Dragon banner – remove it from the game. why? -> it’s nothing more than a mobile siege weapon.

Almost same spot where I got those nasty stacks on my thief. I am not sure how many mortars can hit that place but sure it’s effective if they can stack the field.

katniss.6735:

That is all .

you are not alone

on 2nd note, you probably are if you are still in wvw :P

I saw 49 stacks of it on me, seems rather excessive considering I tried to move out from the field right when it hit.

OP, sounds like you’ll get kicked for your attitude even when you get plenty of LIs.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

gimrob.9071:

General speaking I find people in 35-70 range are lacking the basics of fotm, running soldiers, lack dodging, just spam one weapon, can not even eat basic food or pots, or even listen. And why run that tier when u can do t4. Which keeps some of the bad players out. Just run 75 that’s a daily a lot.

Some of us need to raise our level to access the T4 and need money to get ascended stuff because the needed AR for T4 can’t be obtained from drops below T4 (never get weapons or armor drops below T4, only rings (and you can buy amulet and trinkets), and rings + amulet + backpack + trinkets can’t get you enough AR for T4).

Gear is the small part of why T3 form are so annoying to do, most has to do with people not knowing the basics/mechanics.

Although temp healing is not as bursty as druid’s, it can still dish out some 10-12k burst heal while still giving superior sustain healing as well. Most fights don’t need that many heals and with somewhat decent party, druid heals are enough + dmg buff. Tempest is nice for less skill groups.

Your choice to suffer for fancy pixels.

rfdarko.4639:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Did you even read the OP?

yep. A simple “All welcome” doesn’t always register with people, especially if they are in a hurry to find a group and just wanna grab the first lfg that pops up. Specifically putting “newbies” or “first timers” or something like that in the description better deter players who kick for low AP. Adding hearts or smilelies help as well. The fluffier the description the better. I’ve recently been doing fractals with a friend who has ~1k AP and this is the best filter method we’ve found so far.

I see, I’ve always considered “all welcome” as the univeral “noobs welcome” lfg so to me, if someone exp joins and feels like kicking the noobs, I’ll kick him instead. All welcome might not register with some that well, but just as I want new players to be able to read, I want that from exp players too.

Dinosaurs.8674:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Dinosaurs.8674:

I have never seen someone kicked from a scale that low ever, even for going afk lol. Why even bother? You could carry them through the scale in the time it would take to put the group in LFG and wait for a new party member. Considering you need 3 people to kick and the rest of the group likely was not partied beforehand, we either aren’t getting the whole story or a group of people was intentionally griefing him.

There is no issue with elitism in fotm.

3 kicks in a row seem excessive but from time to time I see lfgs like “lvl 10 meta zerkers xAP+”, not really surprising if some people get kicked.

Not saying these all aren’t real but my friends occasionally put up stuff like that as a joke…and i have to change the party description after 5 minutes because no one is joining lol

Well if you make a fun lfg that is somewhat normal in its expectations (many have 10k at and meta zerker is a normal requirement too, then people just assume you are serious. Spice it up, I usually use “full legendary elitist 50k ap required to carry us”. Amusing how many take this seriously too.

doddbox.8153:

HenryChinaski.4732:

AP is not good but is there any other (better) kind of Selection?
The most people i know dont like kicking people, so its sometimes hard when you try to carry a total noob in a hard t4 frac.
I dont even search for AP but i understand when people want some kind of minimum from people they start with.

Pinging gear and traits is a valid method, it tells you if they actually care about meta compositions and efficiency. Checking how much they have roleplayed achievement points doesn’t tell you how experienced they are in a fractal.

AP check is still easier to use, and faster too.

Having ele of every race, I still play human male (tho I have human female too) most. I like the animations and the armour choices are better than for females.

My 2nd most fav is asura, they are cutest, yet fierce balls of apocalypse you can get in the game. I can’t really confirm if smaller size helps much since all my eles get most focus everywhere. Plus you can RP a bunny easily.

I was hoping they’d merge servers in regard to keep some activity difference between tiers, ie gold servers super full, silver full, bronze almost full. I don’t like massive q’s and I like the type of community that used to be on low pop servers. I moved from Blackgate to Vabbi/UW for the gameplay not pvd, you get as much pvd in higher tiers if you follow a zerg (and way more wxp from what I noticed since the merge). The two main reasons why folks stayed on low pop servers were
1. no gold for gems, usually these guys would go to servers with most effective pvd
2. folks that liked the community/low q’s – these people now suffer most from the culture shock.

I like that there are more people in wvw now but having 40+ qs or 100+ after reset makes me look at other mode options. I would certainly prefer being merged with other low pop server. If I wanted to farm wxp, I’d be in gold tier long time ago.

Tentonhammr.7849:

The original iterations of high level fractals were like a kitten dive bar adored by its regulars that turned hipster. Sure the service is better, the beer is colder and the bathroom isn’t a hell hole anymore, but the nostalgia and atmosphere are gone.

*Something about change, circle of life, ect. *

One more thing to note, before to go up one personal fract lvl, the person had to do 4 maps, now it’s only one. People can spam molten duo to get lvl 100 and never touch other maps until they pop up in dailies. Very annoying to do lvl 99 and see people dying cos they have no idea jumping over waves works.

Dinosaurs.8674:

I have never seen someone kicked from a scale that low ever, even for going afk lol. Why even bother? You could carry them through the scale in the time it would take to put the group in LFG and wait for a new party member. Considering you need 3 people to kick and the rest of the group likely was not partied beforehand, we either aren’t getting the whole story or a group of people was intentionally griefing him.

There is no issue with elitism in fotm.

3 kicks in a row seem excessive but from time to time I see lfgs like “lvl 10 meta zerkers xAP+”, not really surprising if some people get kicked.

rfdarko.4639:

Probably what happened was once a few people joined, it became less obvious who had started the lfg and thus your friend got the boot. I recommend putting something like “newbies welcome” early in the discription – something saccharine enough to scare off people who want 5k+ ap for a friggin level 13 fractal pug.

Did you even read the OP?

I miss them, on other hand it’s no longer dc on 4th map = lost 1 hour.

rabidsmiles.5926:

The base necro? I don’t really see too many of those around to judge…Reaper brings too many goodies to the table not to take it.

Reaper allows most anyone to survive the harder content as it’s very forgiving and the extra HP pool soaks up a lot of missed dodges. T4 that I would normally get my kitten handed to me on my Ele, is a breeze with Reaper.

One of the reasons I started to play necro. With zerker ele (my main) high fractals are often massive pain when the party doesn’t give kitten about playing decently. Seriously, even at 90+, there are way too many guards that don’t use WoR or rifle warrs etc. With necro I can take manymore hits than ele and I can boon corrupt like crazy.