Guild Wars 2

If you don’t care, then why are you even saying anything? How is it cheating when it’s been recognized as a perfectly fine strategy?

What would be your alternative? How would you change this event so that all chanters needed to be killed, but the level did not become overrun with mobs the higher in fractals you progressed? Toss me some ideas here, because I don’t believe we should be able to just zerg rush through everything and call it a day. The words dull and mindless come to mind, and there’s plenty of that in WvW. Let’s brainstorm.

I fail to see how it’s an exploit. Enlighten me.

I prefer Hammer/Mace/Shield as the main set of my guardian. I’ve got her outfitted with all knights gear on everything, boon duration runes and precision increase sigils to increase group might. Run Mace/Shield if the boss fight goes bad, because Mace 3 is a really good block on a short cooldown. Use it when you can’t mash F3 for aegis. In most fights, you should be perfectly fine to just autoattack on hammer, so your melee attackers can benefit from the protection symbol. Use Hammer 2 whenever you see a beneficial combo field go down, so as Time Warp or a fire field. Should be able to get it off twice in most mesmer fields at least.

While my personal weapon preference is all melee (forcing a tank in a game where there isn’t one), I carry a staff for more heals and utility, a focus for condition removal, and a scepter when the fight is a ranged fight regardless of class. I also carry a beserker set when we either need more deeps or I effin’ feel like :B

Trait build is 0/10/30/20/10 for Signet CDR, Consecration CDR, and Shout CDR, might on crit and altruistic healing. Guardian trait lines have something useful in all of them, so once you get the hang of dungeons you’ll figure out where you want to go with it. Hope this helps.

The four people not carrying the hammer need to sit in one side of the hallway right at the bend and aggro the chanters to that corner. This way, that side does not heal, a la bring them into your LoS. It’s a perfectly acceptable tactic, as is leaving one alive so that seal doesn’t heal nearly as much. These kinds of strategies happen because someone looked at the situation, used their brains, and did so without breaking the event. If every challenge thrown at us was meant to be zerg rushed, they would be designed that way, but it’s not.

That said, you can just zerg it pre 20. I don’t understand how you couldn’t.

It all boils down to what you bring to the table in your group as a player. If you can execute your class well to the benefit of the team (ie as a thief, stealth rezzing and using smoke screen to your advantage), you can ideally bring just about any class to a dungeon run and it would go fine.

Class order goes something like this in dungeons: Warriors/Guardians/Mesmers, then Elementalist/Necromancer/Thief, Engineer gets it’s own tier, as does Ranger. Each set brings something different to the table and if you can execute it well, then you can play any class in dungeons. You just have to accept that some classes will do a particular job better than others. Thieves won’t hit as hard as warriors, but their mobility and utility makes up for that. Elementalists can’t might stack as well as a guardian for about twice the amount of work, but through managing your attunements you can open up more variety of combo fields for a hammer guardian or thief to take advantage of than the other classes.

It’s all in how you play your class. I main a thief for PvE dungeon play. You’re not useless, you just have to learn how to make yourself useful, which is true of any class.

Thieves die instantly in Arah? I’m sorry, but you’ve landed yourself with some really terrible thieves. Thieves can make the gauntlet running in Arah so much easier on the group. Add to that, the dungeon itself is perfectly fine. Few tweaks here and there and it’ll probably be in the best spot out of all the dungeons available, not to imply that it is no good now. Not everything can be smash-face-on-keyboard easy, nor should it be a 10 minute farm fest. Arah actually feels rewarding for how difficult it can be, and Lupicus has got to be one of my favorite fights.

That thief just doesn’t know how to dodge, it seems. For my thief, for any dungeon as well as fracs, I run a 10/30/0/15/15 build. In dungeons, it’s shortbow/sword/pistol. In fracs, it’s any weaponset except for anything with dagger offhand. Some levels I run shortbow/pistol/pistol, some I run shortbow/sword/pistol, and I always run pistol/pistol/dagger/pistol for Jade Maw end boss (not through the trash getting there though).

Gotta adapt as the situation calls for it!

I admit, I jump at the chance to take a newbie through a dungeon as early as possible. It’s not because I enjoy the challenge of leading them through it, though I do, but because I want them to see as soon as possible what they can expect in later dungeons as a general idea, and to get them to think on what they’ll need to bring to the table.

That side, the idea that players new to dungeons, or to any game at all, needs to do research in order to know what to do in game as far as just playing through the content (this does not apply to class builds) seems kittening dumb to me. It is never going to occur to new players that they need to go looking at youtube videos, the wiki, or GW2 dungeon blogs, or what have you in order to have their first dungeon experience. The only time I ever did that was for Arah 1, and I find it a lot more fun to just experience the dungeon rather than spoil it for yourself for the sake of not getting flak from the rest of the player base, most of whom probably had the same or similar experience as the new player just trying to learn to do the dungeon at some point in time.

It detracts from the experience of the dungeon itself, I feel, so the notion just seems silly to me.

Finally, an ele build that I’m actually excited to play! reading through the numbers and looking at all the positive feedback, I can’t wait to get started on gearing up to try my hand at this.

Sovta.4719:

There is no reason zerker ele/thief/necro should be in there anyway, on higher level EVERYONE has to contribute, so everyone needs to take care of hammer. Zerker gear is for cof, not here, that is why everyone is whining about shaman boss, witch is not that hard with proper gear/utility.

I actually do Fractals regularly with zerker gear on my thief, and change out for p/v/t gear as the situation demands it. Zerker gear requires skill to play, most fractals require a brain to complete. If you can manage both, you can wear whatever gear you want as long as it’s not the reason you can’t do your job or holding your group back.

He can be a littler overwhelming at first, seeing as there aren’t or isn’t another boss that’s as involved skill wise as he is. This does not mean he’s impossible to kill. Learn the tricks of each phase, focus less on DPS and more on positioning and survival, and just keep at it. You’ll eventually nail it down and beat him.

I main a thief for dungeons, actually. I wouldn’t recommend it as you have to love playing the class in order to want to put in the work to make it effective, but between shadow refuge and smokescreen alone, they certainly aren’t bad to have. Spammable blast finisher on your short bow, stealth rezzing through shadow refuge, smokescreen when your guardians WoR is down, etc. Not to mention you’re very mobile and deal decent damage on your own, so if you learn to manage that mobility, you can capitalize on your position or clutch save a party from wiping.

That said, a common misconception a lot of people have about thieves in relation to dungeons is you’re supposed to go d/d. Don’t. There are very rare instances where you’ll need to switch to d/d, and that ultimately is personal preference (in most case, I’m still d/p). Instead, look at sword/pistol for your main weapon set and ALWAYS carry a short bow for swap. With the first set, you get 3 stuns (2 always active and 1 on stealth), a gap close that turns into a stun break, and a very safe small aoe blind . In the event you need to stay ranged or you want the finisher for combo fields you know are coming, switch to short bow and watch for the opportunity to pop combos with your 2. Your 3 also cripples and can make kiting safer for you group.

You don’t deal warrior damage though, and you don’t do half the awesome things that a guardian could, but if you play your cards right, you can be just as useful as both without needing one or the other (warrior without a guardian, guardian without a warrior). Don’t discount them, but be aware of the challenge it’ll be to get them to be effective in dungeons.

I don’t mind skipping in easy dungeons such as CoF. I don’t care how it goes, fighting, skipping, I’ll do whatever majority wants.

There is only one exception to this rule where I will tear into someone.

The first person to so much as utter the word “skip” at any trash mob in TA that isn’t the wyrms at the fork in the road on the Up path will be torn a new one. Given the composition of the trash mobs, and the gross lack of paying attention I come across in that dungeon, no-one is getting a free ten minute ride to the end boss that will still kill you if you don’t know where your dodge key is. I can skip the trash, but I can only account for me, and it is therefore safer for the group as whole that we fight the mobs. Trash loot? Don’t care. Time constraints? I made it clear we weren’t skipping. TA is a dungeon where you either pay attention or you die, one of the things I love about it, but too many players try to treat it like every other easy dungeon mode. It isn’t, stop trying to treat it like it is. Especially if we’re doing f/f or f/u!

Thief is my answer, actually. While I feel my guardian is a lot better at keeping people alive, I am much more comfortable with my thief. Between shadow refuge and smokescreen, it’s easier to safely rez someone in a poor situation and if you’re the one who winds up kiting (one kite one rez at Lupicus is the best example), you have the perfect short bow weapon kit to do it with, and with the right timing and skills, you can turn your kittenty kiting situation into boss vs you+4 other thieves, diverting aggro and picking up on the lack of DPS assuming you kited to the right part of the room. Given how mobile the thief is, complete with utility and decent DPS, I am perfectly capable of carrying groups with mine.

Perhaps it’s less you being griefed and more something up with you as a player. I have kicked people for giving unwarranted advice the entire dungeon, when it’s clear we’ve been through the instance before and no-one has stated it’s their first time, in some cases being asked to stop and refusing to do so. I have come across pugs that will drop instance/kick/troll, but maybe once every handful of encounters and usually dealt with before they’re a problem. A lot of the time the person giving the advice is spending less time DPSing and otherwise being useful themselves and more of “that kitten that doesn’t realize he’s being carried.” You may have the best of intentions, but you’ll come across like a kitten regardless of how you -think- you sound. No-one will perceive you as being the reason your group was able to beat the dungeon, that you “led the group to victory!”, no matter how much you may think so.

Akimbo.4835:

Anyway we got to the first Nightmare Court group and it consisted of 2 Knights and 1 Sorcerer. I was running blocks, blinds and had the stability shout. Which meant I could last ~20 seconds in total before I was one shot by a Knight. Entire team wiped about 5 times at least before I quit. It was costing more in repairs than the dungeon would have rewarded me with for completion.

[…]

Even if I dodge/block/stability/protection, I can only do that so much. Eventually they get a hit in and that’s game over. I have to wait until we all die so we can respawn and try again….and again….and again.

Actually, going based off this, I assume you were running “Retreat!”, clearly had ‘Stand Your Ground!", so I’m going to gues your third was “Hold The Line!”?

Guardians are fantastic for this dungeon. This is generally what I run when I use mine in TA: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mccM0V9cmRlNomRlNo0axGaMomqMRo You absolutely need to carry a staff with you for this dungeon. You will want a hammer, for the 5+4 combo and keeping your group safe, melee attackers safer. Knights always lead in with their leap, so time your dodge backwards. They will always drop an aoe immediately after, so you can hammer away at it if you feel comfortable/safe enough to do so. If not, you stay in staff until you think you need to switch.

If you’re going to be staying in melee range a lot, and you run an AH style build, Hallowed Ground pulses do heal you as well as reapplying stability for yourself and any of your melee attackers. As soon as that consecration is over, you rely on SYG until it’s up again. If you can, you can try to use Staff 5 to try and wall off the knights and block their initiation, and you’ll wanna mash 4 whenever it’s off cooldown and you’re certain you won’t be stunned. REMEMBER YOUR DODGE KEY. IT IS THERE FOR A REASON.

You cannot just run into 2 knights and a sorceror to face tank them and expect to win. TA is full of things that will kill a fully knight’s geared guardian if it so much as looked at you funny. You need to learn position, timing, and circumstances that will permit you to do what you want to do.

For 2 knights and a sorceror, or in any group that gets a sorceror, you want to focus down the sorc first. It’s the Nightmare Court equivalent of a wells necro, a class which can directly counter a guardian easily. The amount of aoe it drops as well as being a ranged pain in the kitten will down most groups before the knights can even really pose a major threat. Your focus order generally is Sorceror>Knight>Duelist>Cultist>Archer (just like in AC 2, the necromancers are always first because of mass aoe). If you have a thief, mesmer, or necro, you can solo pull the mobs (no particular order in this case), which are easy and should NOT be wiping your group on their own.

TA can be difficult, yes, but it forces you to pay attention to what you’re doing and what your group is doing. Skipping is not advised unless you know for sure your group can do it successfully, as on some classes it’s harder or players are just dumb. However, a thief can make this easier for your group to accomplish.

So to sum- Staff/Hammer +SoJ/HG/SYG/ToC. You can swap HG for WoR or HTL as you see fit, and if you don’t want the signet, you can instead swap that for one of the above mentioned spells. You’ll definitely want your healing signet for condition removal and a personal oh kitten button, and your tome is better overall for group survivability, though ToW isn’t too terrible if you feel you’re better off increasing groupwide deeps (hint: you probably aren’t).

Hope this helped You can whisper me in game if you like.

For mesmers, Power/Precision/Crit Damage always seems to be the way to go. That said, I would get yourself an invisible 20 slot bag and carry around a set of power/vitality/toughness gear, for situations where your group comes up short faster than you can safely do your job wearing your glasscannon stats. It’s what I do for my thief. Primarily wear glasscannon, but if my group is either bad or we just need to survive (grawl fractal and lupicus come to mind), I’ve got safety gear ready for use.

As a thief main, I haaaaaaaaate when my target gets knocked away from me. I’ve actually gotten this more from shield guardians than greatsword mesmers though. Perhaps because the mesmers I tend to run with regularly know when and when not to use it. New guardians though, seasoned players or not, just love to smash shield 5 at the first sign of a close enemy on someone. You do not need to knock them away when I am spam-stunning them to death, please :| Promise you, I’m fine. Has led to a handful of deaths.

Hi there. Been leveling an elementalist for the last week or so, and now that I’ve hit the halfway point I’ve been playing around with traits on build websites. Elementalists seem to be the combo field masters, but I can’t decide on what job it is I need to get done and how I go about that. I like dagger/dagger, fast and in your face, but since I mainly live in dungeons, should I be more focused on staff? I’ve been playing around with scepter/dagger as well, seems excellent when it comes to might stacking.

What stats should I consider? Would elementalist be best utilized as a support/heals style of play or a tanky DPS? Some suggestions would be great

Were you the first person in the dungeon before everyone else? If so, you’re the instance owner, and when the owner leaves, the entire party is kicked out. Not a bug, though a bit of a nuisance.

The solution to your attitude is simply this: Tell people what you want from them, and keep that list small.

When I make my groups, or when my usual nightly crew take on new people, we have one general rule. Have you run the dungeon before? No? Then be sure to tell us when you don’t know something. In groups that I run, I don’t care if you’ve never run the dungeon, aren’t optimally built, or playing a high burst class (have a friend who is an engineer who would put most warriors to shame when it comes to managing his kit), simply be willing to listen and have a vague understanding of what you’re doing.

What you’re doing is only going to cause you trouble. New players (scrubs, in your terms) do not get better being given the cold shoulder. You want them to do things a certain way? Explain how it should be done and why that way is effective. You need to communicate. If you perhaps get down off your high horse for a few minutes, things would be better.

Well, one reason that stuff like that might happen is because they think that dungeons are just exclusive, instanced map areas to explore, when they aren’t. I have run into new players who did make this mistake. Not that this is a widely prevalent mindset among new and inexperienced players. I think it’s less to do with being embarrassed and more to do with players just aren’t expecting the level of difficulty that can be found in dungeons.

Are they not aware of what a guardian does? It’s right up there with Warriors and Mesmers for dungeoning. That just baffles me that you would be kicked for being a guardian.

Sometimes it just helps to ask before hand. Though I do agree, that drives me up a wall when that happens.

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

I was under the impression that paths do not reset their daily rewards until the daily reset at 6:00 P.M. central time. Since daily dungeon rewards are account bound, IIRC, then you would have to wait for the reset. I’m not entirely sure on any of this though since I only have one level 80.

Dailies do reset, yes, but the times themselves are bound to your characters, not your account. So if you did CoF on your thief, and then wanted to go back an hour later on your guardian, you would still get 60 tokens on your guardian as well. After that, you’ll then have DR on both of those characters, so you would wait for the daily reset to go back and do it again on those characters.

It’s usually about an hour, maybe two hours, give or take.

Jabiacas Horologium.4976:

Nice post and offer Mosen, good to see some people who want to be helpful to others. Sucks people have to troll your offer like they are personally offended, but what can you do.

Well, nobody’s really trolled yet. Just a misunderstanding.

I am not trying to change the general consensus. The topic is exactly as I stated in the title. I am not here to prove that what works doesn’t work, when it fact it does. That is not the topic here and if you want to discuss that topic, go do so in another thread for that topic. I am offering sub 80s someone to group with. If that’s not your cup of tea, then that’s fine. This is not the place for it.

DeathPanel.8362:

Mosen.9526:

I suppose it would be better to say with more attention being brought to 80 only groups lately.

People tend to do runs faster and with more success in an all lvl 80 group when it comes to pugs. This is a consensus formed from experience from the majority of the community. That’s why you see far more 80s only teams running dungeons.

If the fact was that low lvl teams did runs better than high lvl then the opposite would be true.

There are some experienced low levels, but since people are strangers and there’s no real way to tell someone’s ability when you first team up the rational thing for people to do is to lower the chances of failure by setting some standards beforehand.

I am not here to argue about the effectivity or ineffectivity of 80 only groups. I do speed runs daily and nightly of high level dungeons in only level 80 groups. However I’ve also brought friends on low levels, players looking to do their first run, and have been brought through dungeons pre-80 myself (sometimes 7 levels under). I am simply trying to give players who want to run a dungeon pre-80 the chance to do so without the hassle of being kicked from group after group after group because the players advertising couldn’t be bothered to explicitly state they were looking for 80s only. If you want to debate or argue the issue, go do so in a thread that does exactly that. This is not the place for it.

I suppose it would be better to say with more attention being brought to 80 only groups lately.

…Feel free to add me if you’re sub 80 and are interested in doing a dungeon. I cannot promise that I will always be available to do it, but I don’t mind helping a newbie or a seasoned player level an alt. Send me a tell or mail or post here or something and hit me up.

Note: I’m on the US servers.

I prefer to skip for the sake of time. Yeah, I get the argument that they have a chance at decent loot drops, but the chance is so low I’d rather not waste the time. Ultimately I guess it all boils down to what you’re doing the fractals for. I’m there for rings, not loot. The cores and occasional lodestone are just an added bonus, but I run so many dungeons in a given day anyway that I don’t really care about that kind of stuff.

JJBigs.8456:

TA? You think im going to risk dying and being kicked for failing on a light armor? Sorry, heavy has more armor aka more chance to live.

I’ve actually done better in groups that brought along two conditions necros and a mesmer as opposed to four warriors and a guardian. If you’re dying so much there on a light class that your group is going to kick you for it? Well, learn where your dodge button is. Learn the safe spots. Rally off flowers. Run your stun breakers if your group wants to skip trash. Figure out which courtier in a mob to target first.

I’d rather run with a mixed group, ESPECIALLY a conditions necro, for TA than all warriors and guardians. Not everyone runs the same DPS build or shout build or can do their job with any ounce of coherence. Seems more to me like someone wants to be carried instead of working with his group to get the job done.

I’ve always seen it as a more shy type thing, or awkward even. Perhaps someone just said something around him he shouldn’t have heard, hence the “I really shouldn’t be here,” head scratch.

Let’s see-

Damjana [Thief], Serbian and Macedonian feminine form of Damian, meaning “To Tame.”
Ashoka Iretol [Elementalist], with Ashoka being Sanskrit for “without Sorrow.” The lst name was just something I picked because it rolled well with the name.
Ithai Stanimir [Mesmer], Ithai being Hebrew for “with me”, Stan being Slavic for “stand, become” and Mir being Slavic for “peace”.
Hollis Feidlimid [Warrior], Hollis being derived from an English surname meaning “holly trees” and Feidlimid being Irish Gaelic for “beauty” and “ever good”.

c:

Nobody seems to remember that thieves cannot insta-restealth once they come out of it. Upon leaving stealth, they get the revealed debuff and cannot re-enter it. So I have to ask, everyone who complains of these backstab burst builds, are you just standing there? That’s a 3 second window to stun (or CC of any kind) and get the kitten out. Thieves are incredibly vulnerable to CC, and while inside of stealth, any AoE. I don’t do nearly enough sPvP or WvW to really have a grasp on this, so if someone could enlighten me. . .

One would assume, if you’re paying attention, you’d be able to leave a bad engagement against a glasscannon critstab thief. Perhaps realize you don’t need to see them stealth to know they might be coming for you depending on your class, role, and whether or not you’re out of position compared to the rest of your team.

Let’s bump this

Thank you very, very much Rouks!

Greetings! I’m Mosen, one of the GMs for The Mosenites!

We’re a small, fairly new guild looking to grow and become a decently sized, all active group of awesome players. We participate in all aspects of the game, such as dungeons, WvW, fractals, and experimenting in sPvP. No matter if you’re new to MMOs or have been playing for years, anyone and everyone is welcome.

Guild activity occurs the most in the evenings and on weekends, and we have a Teamspeak 3 server available for use. While it is not required for dungeons or general PvE, we do however require it for WvW and sPvP teams where effective communication is a necessity. Having a mic is not necessary :P

Overall, we’re a guild full of friendly and helpful players, if not slightly crazy and a tad eccentric. Please message me in game if you have questions or would like an invite!

-Mosen

/join Mosen.9526

The event is just starting and our overflow is not yet full. Hurry up!

Edit: Our overflow is full now. I will keep accepting requests if you want to try to get in, but I guarantee nothing.