CoF P1. Each run takes very little time, and nets you a decent chunk of cash.
Then exchange the tokens for 30-token rare armour pieces (eg, hat), and salvage those for ecto – that should really help you to get closer to your goal.
I was thinking about the bosses; I guess it’s all about timing. Does MF affect chest drops?
Nope
I’m really conflicted towards them. I loved them in GW1; they were tragic, they were morally ambiguous.
In GW2, there are elements I really love— the Dredge rebellion, the mining suits, the communism. Their voice-acting in F&F has been brilliant as well.
But, at the same time, they’re also a huge missed opportunity. The Dredge rebellion notwithstanding, they’ve become far too one-dimensional.
They were such a tragic race. I think GW2 is forgetting their tragic history, turning them into one-dimensional villains. It doesn’t suit them. I really, really hope they develop the Dredge, develop their government & start presenting more rebel/ friendly NPCs.
SE explorable mode fills this out somewhat.
There’s friendly dredge annoyed that they fought so hard to gain freedom only to return to servitude under other dredge; two of the paths there revolve around inciting the start of a rebellion. Whether or not this is revisited to any level later remains to be seen, but there is something there.
Too random.
All the other boons / conditions are absolutes. Block next attack. Miss next attack. It’s about using them at the right time to get the right result, instead of just throwing them out to maybe blanket cover everything.
Having something like this would heavily dilute the skill level for the game in exchange for no real benefit.
At first I also thought this was a great idea, but think about it…
The price of Molten Lodes would plummit even deeper into the abyss, into the absolute wothlessness. The price of Charged Lodes would also drop, but not as much since CoE doesn’t have the same amount of farming capabilities. The more tokens you made them cost, the wider the gap between slow and fast dungeons would be. This would make certain legendaries so much easier to get, while only slightly helping the others. Which makes this unfair. Even more so than the current situation.
They are supposed to be rare crafting materials, not everyday bread and milk that you buy from the local market.
Depends on the cost – as things stand, molten lodestones have a sell price of 64s.
Given that you can convert tokens to ecto, with an approximate average of 30 tokens per ecto, to make a price change, it would require a cost of just 90 tokens per lodestone to be financially viable. Realistically, the cost would be more than that.
Additionally, CoF’s problem is that everyone repeats path 1 over and over. With a token requirement, there would be some incentive to do all paths rather than whichever is easiest.
As things stand, certain legendaries are already so much easier to get, due to the imbalance in lodestone cost – any that don’t require Charged are much easier than those that do. On top of that, certain unique exotics, especially Mjolnir, have an exceptionally high cost.
In my opinion, this could certainly help stabilize the lodestone market, provided that the cost was right, and there being no exploits in certain dungeons.
Warrior is actually OK. I’ve been in that dungeon specced the same way. What you do need to do is change weapon and major trait options. Personally, all my characters carry around all weapon options they can use (which gets problematic for warrior given space).
Necromancer, however, has serious problems, and because of that I do agree that condition-users need to be able to help break objects.
Honestly if anything; it should give you new dialogue options like in many of the fine games produced by Bethesda. Nothing to affect the game outright, just something fun for the sake of being fun.
They do. Some dialog choices only appear if you have high enough of one of the three. Sometimes an NPC may have one option for each personality type, with each option doing the same thing, and you’ll only see one. Those choices are often inconsequential, but for some renown hearts, having certain personality types can save you a fight.
I disagree with having any stats on it. Imagine having to grind out a personality change when switching build just for the stats you want? Or “LF1M Barbaric only!” ?
do you know what the asuran name is and at wich POI its at.
It’s more of an ambient conversation – you don’t get to trigger it, but it can be heard north of the mystic forge in LA. I often hear it when going between crafting areas and the TP. It starts with a human saying “Which way to the outhouse?”
Lightning Flash is pretty much stapled onto my bar, even in PvE.
It’s a stunbreaker that also teleports. If you get into trouble, you can quickly be somewhere else. This really helps if you need to get out of a red circle in a hurry. There’s a great number of times this skill has got me to safety, both in dungeon parties and solo.
More than I care to add up.
£120 on CE. Lots and lots on gems. I would guess I’ve spend around £80 per month on gems every month since release, but it could be more.
Personally think CoF takes too long too complete. The dungeons aren’t challenging, why make them drawn out for the sake of being drawn out?
Too long? With an average group of mixed classes, you’re looking at 10-12 minutes. With an optimized group of the “right” classes, it can drop to 6-7 minutes. For the cash gain (in particular, that dropped directly from bosses, which can be massively raised with the right buffs), it’s insane.
At the moment, there is no farming method that comes close to endlessly repeating the same path of the same dungeon.
I think the cash reward is fine, but COF1 needs to be made longer.
Thing is, your suggestion is self-defeating : You pick Tank, they pick Strategist, and you’re back to them dealing you more damage than you can handle.
I’ve played warrior a significant amount in WvW with 2 melee weapon sets (Although I OOC swap in a LB for sieges). Yes, it’s not the strongest class there, but it’s passable.
Inscriptions are not autolearned
You need to buy the recipe and then discover it
Blue and Green inscriptions are autolearned; only rare and exotic ones need to be bought. I’m guessing the OP means the green ones, as the rare at this level are Iron Imbued, rather than iron plated.
If it’s a masterwork inscription, you should have it at that level. Check that you don’t have a filter – at the top there’s both a search box, and an advanced filter to only display some item types.
can’t we repurchase the trait books for 2 gold each? and then just keep a stack of them?
The books are 10X more expensive than the NPC who resets traits. The Gem item would need to be fairly cheap to work, and it would work with any level for the same price. Or possibly come in stacks.
On a side note don’t ever spend 2g on the books as the NPC is much cheaper lol.. I think the max cost of the NPC who resets is something like 14s, but I’d have to check.
The difference is that books go into your inventory and can be used at any time. If you’re testing out a new build, and find it’s really not working, you can use a book mid-dungeon to respec.
Having a gemstore item that could do this would be helpful, although it’d have to be either very, very cheap, or have lots of uses.
1) Depends on activity.
2) Absolutely. It’s not even the speed vs gain that most bothers me, it’s that CoF1 is utterly mindless. Normally, the fast farming methods should also be the hardest – if you’re good enough to be able to do it, then you deserve a good reward. But when the best farming option is just throwing as much damage as you can muster directly at the foe, there’s something wrong.
Here’s the issue : Different armor types do not play well together.
Before they changed the armor preview, there was a lot of texture issues that arose when trying to mix-and-match types – this is why they first removed previewing other armor types, then when it returned, it only previews a single type at once.
I have a feeling that this is an inherent issue that won’t be easy to fix, and would require a lot to justify the developer time on this rather than something else.
Like Revodeel, I would rather just have more armor options.
I prefer GW2 – the RL dailies take far too long to finish, and are required if you want to gain any money at all. The dynamic events in RL are unclear and largely unrewarding.
I can’t find any karma vendors in RL.
I think this is a good idea, but does need for the levels to change to account bound.
From taking my Ele through fractals, I’ve got my alts enough AR to survive, plus enough experience to know the areas.
One thing I love about the change is being able to take other chars through fractals without needing to repeat the 1-10 learning stage over and over, and don’t see any need to lose that benefit.
Not sure how to really reply to this, but you’re missing a few key details on a lot of those skills :
1) Spectral wall applies protection to allies, and can apply vuln to multiple opponents, while OMM! is just a single target. It also creates a combo field.
2) For both the Engineer’s skills you mention, you compare toolbelt skills to utility skills. The toolbelt skills are bonuses, and need to be balanced as such.
Short answer : Everything needs to be considered when it comes to balance. Picking one aspect doesn’t give you a good enough view of the whole picture.
I’m not saying there’s no need for some tweaks and slight alterations, but you’re taking a grass-is-greener approach that just doesn’t work.
(edited by Ninth Requiem.3250)
I used to use staff in dungeons, due to it’s AoE blastiness and supportitude.
I’ve since swapped to S/D; I found that 90% of the time I wasn’t using the full extent of the AoE, I learned I could be a lot more mobile rather than stand as far back as possible to avoid damage.
S/D gives you access to a lot of blast finishers; being able to trigger AoE might stacks at an incredible rate is just awesome. I do sometimes swap back to staff if I need a lot of CC in a fight, but generally it’s just not worth it.
Warriors do need a nerf
You’re wrong. Warriors do not need a nerf due to how terrible we are at PvP. CoF1 farming is what needs to be fixed, not Warriors.
Exactly this.
CoF1 lets you go full damage with no risk, so no wonder the class with the highest up-close raw damage wins out.
You don’t need versatile classes like the Engie, because you don’t need to worry about support. With just 2 weak bosses, skippable trash groups and the need for only burst against the acolytes, Necros just don’t work well. With such static play, the mobility of the ranger goes to waste.
If CoF required a wider range of roles, you’d get a wider range of classes.
I just blew 15 laurels on 30 dyes. Was it worth it? Yes. Yes, it was.
With you right here. Spent all my laurels so far on dyes. So worth it! Even though I don’t actually change my armor dye, it’s still cool to have lots unlocked.
To the OP, I have an issue with “They want it, so it’s necessary to them.”. Wanting something doesn’t make it a necessity – the difference is “Can you experience all content without it?”, and the answer is a big Yes. yes you can.
I miss my dailies fairly often. Either through not logging in, or getting sidetracked doing non-daily stuff. Being able to finish the next day would be nice, but then it’s not really a daily anymore, is it?
Skins….Weapon Armor etc Some more GW1 skins would be very welcome.
That is all
Very much this.
I’d compile a full list, but it’d get way too long.
But if it could include some light armours that don’t have skirts (Mesmer Elite Rogue’s, Ele Obsidian, etc) and/or some medium armours that don’t have longcoats (Ranger furlined, assassin Canthan etc), then I would buy them so fast. As things stand, the light and medium gem store skins aren’t very good.
In terms of weapon skins, there’s lots of great ones, but my favourites are the GW1 bonus mission pack skins.
No thank you – I’d rather have as much choice as possible.
Cosmetically inclined, absolutely, but I would hate to be arbitrarily gated off from certain armor sets because it “belongs” to another class despite being the same weight and protection level.
As things stand, I’m already a little put out by lack of selection – why do so many medium armours need to be long coats? This suggestion would only exacerbate this problem.
Attacking him from inside his model is much easier if you go into Options and turn off melee assist.
Pretty much everything from level 1 up till 50. The moment you reach Claw Island, it all falls apart. Not just because of Trahearne (Although partially), but it seems the quests before that were inventive and stood out from one another, whereas after that it’s just about smacking risen and then smacking some more identical risen.
I think my favourite step is the Infinity Ball line.
Having additional damage on skills designed for control won’t really help you – you’ll just use them as soon as they become available, and be back to auto-attacking.
You say that if SL did more damage than AA “good play would still dictate you save it for closing distances”, but it really wouldn’t. You’d be better off using it on recharge, because that means you get the most number of uses of it out of any given timeframe. The only way to balance it would be to extend the recharge, and guess what that means? Back to AA.
The problem is that the open-world enemies are so non-threatening that anything but damage is useless. Aimed shot (I’m assuming that’s what you meant, since Crip shot is a Ranger bow skill) is great when you need to keep a distance. When fighting really tough melee enemies, it’s great for keeping out of their reach. If all you’re thinking about is “This enemy is taking too long to be dead”, the combat is clearly too easy.
So 5 runs of CoE, 2 before and 3 after the reset.
5 rares, 0 ectos.
0 cores.
0 lodes.
I get the feeling i’ve been on DR ever since the 28th patch. Currently there is less grind in a THPS game than there is farming CoE for cores. Please award a soulbound lode after the completion of all paths. Gives people an incentive to not leave, and also means at maximum you have to run all 3 CoE paths 100 times for the cores you need for a legendary.
Thanks
Dinkle-
Am I missing something?
This doesn’t seem at all like DR, just low drops. DR would imply that you got plenty the first time, and each repeat get less and less – it’s Diminishing returns, as in the return for the same effort diminishes. This may not seem like a big deal, but you’re going to confuse this issue with other actual DR issues if you use the wrong terminology.
I’ve run CoE quite a lot. Enough for the majority of an armor set. I think in this entire time I’ve got maybe 2 lodestones at most, and I think a few cores. I average much less than 1 rare per run; I’d guess at around 1 rare per 3 runs.
Having a soulbound lodestone as part of the dungeon reward wouldn’t really help – many people don’t actually have a use for them. On top of that, I don’t think materials are able to have soulbound / not soulbound versions; if they did, then they couldn’t stack, or both be placed into mat storage. Remember when chocolate / vanilla etc was karma-bought and acc bound? When they became drops, all existing items changed too.
I’d support increasing drop rate on lodestones, or making lodestones available for dungeon tokens though – charged lodestone price on TP is crazy high because of it’s low drop rate combined with just how many things need it. Having a way to drop that price would be great.
It was in the November 15th patch, listed as
“The Fire Elemental encounter in Metrica Province has received a balance pass.”
Dungeons are hard due to their difficulty being tied to certain strategies you have to discover without a clue….
Such as?
For the most part, even without looking up anything beforehand, you can figure out some basic strategies for bosses by :
- Working out which animations prelude heavy damage (eg, Kholer)
- Looking at the tooltip on various status effects on the boss (eg, Lupi’s grub-buff)
- Finding places to avoid red circles (eg, Stacking on Alpha to escape the cone attack)
Sure, it may take a couple of wipes, but there’s always something there to let you know what’s happening. The problem is that many groups are too willing to continually throw themselves mindlessly at the boss and hope, rather than take a moment to talk the problem through.
For the OP, I don’t pretend to be omg-leet, and yet I have successfully pugged all dungeons (although not all paths of all dungeons yet – there are a couple that it’s hard to find a group willing to attempt). And this has included undergeared teams, teams with players unfamilar with the dungeon, odd profession combinations (4 Thieves and a mesmer was actually pretty fun), and even some runs with players of a lower level than the dungeon.
The thing is, the dungeon paths are already pretty unbalanced in terms of time vs difficulty vs reward – Anet balancing for an entirely new tier is a lot to ask for rather than simply expect people to improve how they play.
I don’t sPvP at all, and never will. I use the mists to preview armor and TP to LA.
As long as any rewards were in-line with the PvE content, I’d have no problem with sPvP stuff receiving PvE rewards.
Naturally, somewhat less as sPvP doesn’t have to worry about equipment costs, but if sPvPers also PvE then I’ve no problem with their time spent being rewarded.
For the life of me, I do not understand why game designers do this:
I have to be level 20-25 in order to gather the materials required to make a level 20 item.
By the time I gather enough materials to make this item I will be level 30 and the item will be worthless to me.Pretty stupid.
Do you? What material is it you need?
Green wood and bronze are present from the start, and give items up until level 20. Soft wood and iron are present from level 15 onwards, and can be used for items until level 35 (Soft wood), or 50 (iron).
Seasoned wood is present from 30, and can be used till items of level 50.
Want me to go on?
I don’t think the rings should be salvaged to Globs of Ectoplasm, but I do think they could give the varying Mist Essences.
I’d like to see the at least the Vials of Mist Essence for Pristine Relics and Amulets should definitely be added. Side note: I don’t see why rings were added to the Laurel vendors at such a high cost
The varying essences are only useful for infusing rings / back items, so you have those infused already, you’re back to having items without use.
Why don’t you think ecto salvage is a good idea?
At the moment, the “best” way to get ecto is a 10 min CoF1 run, which nets you enough tokens for 2 rares that can immediately be salvaged for up to 3 ecto each. Given that a ring would require 10 PFRs, each of which taking several times longer than that CoF run, getting some ecto out of it isn’t going to ruin the economy or even provide a decent farming opportunity.
Just let me salvage ascended rings into Vials/Globs/Shards of Mist Essence already. All my alts even those that have never set foot in a fractal are ascended geared already.
That’s nice…if you can stand playing fractals that much. I hate them, personally. Where is the option for this gear for those of us who dislike playing the same few dungeon levels over and over and over and over and over?
At the laurel vendor.
I’d agree that there needs to be something that uses them. To get enough dungeon tokens to get a complete set, you need to do a lot of runs, and even when you do have enough there’s things that can be done with them, even if you just instantly salvage. Meanwhile, once you have two rings, there’s nothing pristine relics can give you.
I suggest :
1) Allow Ascended rings to be salvageable for ecto, in the same way you can do so for dungeon rewards. At the rate you get them, this wouldn’t even be worth farming, but it would let people do something with the relics rather than just junking them.
2) Allow pristine relics to be exchanged for multiple regular relics, meaning they can also be used for the same bags / shards / skill points.
3) Add a consumable purchasable with PFR that counts as your utility nourishment, that gives a short period of AR. Or some other buff comparable to the existing potions / stones, but over a much longer duration.
Sparkfly seems to have a cluster around the Hylek village that happen very frequently (it’s where I usually go if I need events to finish my daily), as well as a few to the north (including the Ash Horizon). The main problem is that so many are focused into small areas of the map that other areas are empty of them.
For Maelstrom, I can only really remember the 3 big chains – Mega-Destroyer, Fluffy and Coil. No small individual events spring to mind.
Honestly, I’m not sure which is worse.
Kicking just before a boss is outright rude and unjust, but whispering his loot afterwards seems spiteful and mean.
Seriously, should we just give up about this or what? 5 months into release and still condition builds are entirely obsolete in dungens/fractals/bosses of any kind/organized group play.
Any condition build worth running is able to get >15 stacks of bleed continously by itself (and this is a very conservative estimation, should actually be for most cases), burning is always up anyway and poison does next to nothing. This invalidates quite a lot of build options, and it’s not like we had great build diversity do begin with…
Also : Conditions are awful against objects, making condition builds a huge liability for certain dungeon paths.
I’m in complete agreement : As things stand, condition-based builds just aren’t up to scratch in party-based PvE.
cheap ectos and a crashed economy for a few days. I love it please do it.
cant you sell them of a few silver?
With the drop chance + relic exchange, there’d have to give a crazy amount of salvaged ectos to even put a dent in ecto prices.
Given that a 10 minute CoF run will get you 0-6 ecto from token rewards, and yet ecto prices are still on the rise, I’m not sure what you think salvaging rings is going to achieve.
I have the same problem with my Necro. I usually take Sceptre + Focus / Staff, and am heavily spec’d and geared for condition damage. When it comes to burrows, I’m more than a little useless. I’m not even sure what other options there are – Axe is poor damage, often fails to hit, heavy relies upon inflicting Vuln, and doesn’t do good damage anyway. MH dagger has problems hitting burrows.
Wells help, but have a crazy-long CD.
After a few attempts, my solution is not to take that char into AC. Yeah …
(edited by Ninth Requiem.3250)
like I said, we tried stacking on him. we still got wiped.
I’m not sure what the problem was. hi it was the last 1 to go down. the rest, maybe they didn’t have a good enough armor, but really, it was on path 1, his pbaoe fire and cone is what killed us.
If stacked ontop of him, his cone attack won’t be able to hit you – it starts a little distance away from him.
To properly stack, go into Options, and turn off Melee Assist. MA keeps you at a minimum distance when attacking based on your size so that animations look right. It’s not quite as much an issue if you’re an asura, but if you’re a large character it can force you into range for the cone. You should literally be inside him when attacking.
For his Ice attack, I time my dodge with the “frost” noise – when I hear that, I dodge. Gets me through/
- Elementalists have no underwater-compatible elite skills. None.
Yes they do – Whirlpool.
Of course, it is a 30-SP cost skill, so you need to buy two 10 point elites before you can even have the option to get it, meaning that for a recently-dinged level 30 Ele you’re much worse underwater than other classes.
Having a FGS-equivalent [Fiery Spear?] underwater would be a really great addition, so I support that.
On the Asura side, I may be wrong, but I don’t think any of the racial elites work underwater.
That is complete ridiculousness given Sylvari beliefs. A Sylvari would never think or do this. For the Sylvari, their bodies were given to them by the Mother Tree so profaning the body would be profaning the Mother Tree. And since Sylvari’s bodies were made to look human it is only natural that they would tend to associate the bodies of their allies as sacred too and therefore hold that profaning any body is profaning the Mother Tree. Bodies should naturally be left to complete their cycle of birth and decay, where yesterday’s bodies are the nutrients for today’s life. Reanimating bodies breaks this sacred cycle and is to be abhorred.
Except this isn’t the case. Sylvari just don’t think that way.
Firstly, they have no concept that profaning the body profanes the mother tree – there’s a sylvari in the Grove who speaks very morbidly about what happens to the bodies of the dead, with not a hint of reverence.
Secondly, the first tenant on Ventari’s tablet specifically tells them to waste nothing; there’s no reason this wouldn’t apply to the bodies of the dead.
Thirdly, (as has been mentioned above) they really have no problem reanimating the bodies of their allies, as witnessed by Killeen in GoA – the others are shocked that she reanimates a corpse of someone they knew, but she doesn’t see any problem with it.
With the upcoming “Phase 2” change to risk/reward in dungeons, do you think CoF Path 1 needs to be re-examined?
As things stand, this path is both substantially faster than any other dungeon path, but also much easier. On top of that, the most favored approach is to take 4 berserker-equipped warriors set for pure damage, plus 1 mesmer. All encounters are resolved by just hitting things as hard as possible, with minimal thought.
Ideally, dungeons should be considered to become more difficult the higher leveled they are, ranging from AC being the practice introduction to dungeons, all the way up to Arah putting everything to the test. This dungeon path completely breaks that.
So I guess the topic at hand is a) Do you think this is a problem? b) If you think this is a problem, what change(s) would you suggest to resolve it?
Here’s my suggestions : (Spoilered in case you either don’t care about what I suggest, or want to think of your own first)
[spoiler]
The Slave Driver / Effigy needs some kind of interesting mechanic, otherwise it’s just focus-down the slave driver mindlessly.
I suggest a combination of the Lovers from AC SM and the effigy from CoF SM – when the slave driver is close enough to the effigy, the effigy has a damage radius around it. This means you need to consider the effigy’s location, and work to pull the two apart.
The Acolytes take far too long to drain the engineer’s essence, meaning there’s plenty of time to focus them down before they even put a dent in the bar.
There’s a DE in Diessa with flame legion shamans conducting a ritual to pollute the lake. The best way to win this is to CC the shamans as they appear, before they get into position, as pure damage while they do the ritual isn’t enough to stop them in time. Something similar for the acolytes would make this a more interesting encounter : They spawn further away, and need to move to drain the essence, but while they are there it drains a lot faster. It’s no longer about pure damage.
The rolling boulders and the door parts are fine as-is, but it’s worth noting that the door controller’s health doesn’t reset (Probably a bug?).
The boss has an interesting crystal effect, but the regen just isn’t very much. There’s no incentive to destroy the crystals when you can easily out-damage the healing effect. Boost the crystal’s healing power, make the crystals also buff his damage, and increase the damage on the purple “shockwave” attack.
[/spoiler]
okey let me try this again:
even with the VERY fastest groups for arah p3 (no doubt the fastest part), it’s no where near as fast as the fast groups of cof p1.
same for the other paths.
this should really not be a discussion, it is pretty logic and else its simply just join a speed run/experienced players p1 cof, then do a p3 speedrun/experienced players and time them and see the huge difference, some in difficulty.so again when this is set, i really don’t feel like its a well design that there is such a huge % difference in time and difficulty of doing arah in comparison which in return makes the reward for cof greatly higher and much better time wise, which is what i think is wrong with it.
Two things :
- The reward for Arah is the skin. The appearance of the armor / weapons. Actual stats should not be any better than any other dungeon. This is something that was supposed to be at the heart of GW2 until Ascended. If you’re not happy with this, then do the content just for fun, unless you don’t enjoy it, in which case don’t do it.
- CoF Path 1 needs to be both harder and longer. At the moment, it’s the most effortless dungeon as well as the fastest, and yet it’s a higher level. It needs to be around the same length / difficulty as Path 3. There’s a lot that needs to change in it (not going through it here), but in short it needs to depend on more than just a big bucket of damage.
Some general tips from my experience:
- Don’t get too focused on any particular one thing. It’s all too easy to be concentrating on your target that you miss another player being downed. You’ll need to watch both the party window, your own position, and of course your target.
- If at first you don’t succeed, try the wiki (wiki.guildwars2.com). There’s usually good guides on any dungeon boss you might have issues with.
- Designate one person (usually the most experienced) to lead – this person should call targets to kill – this will help a you lot with the TA SM boss.
- Mitigate damage: the game is balanced around not needing to heal every attack, but instead to prevent that attack hitting. Cripple/Chill/Immob melee foes, bring up any anti-projectile fields against range foes, and dodge big attacks when needed.
- Revive downed players, but don’t get downed yourself trying to help. You need to get to someone downed as fast as you can, and get reviving. Someone can be brought back on their feet quickly if enough people are helping. However, if you get downed yourself while doing it, no-one’s helped. While reviving, don’t forget to keep an eye on the boss, and what’s happening around you. if you’re in too much danger, hit Escape to cancel revive and get to safety.
- Know the skills of all the professions involved. I take it you play a lot with those two friends? Get to know what their skills look like, especially any combo-field skills. When you see a field up, that’s a great time to use your finishers.
other classes:
ele: armor of earth for stability, cleansing fire as stunbreaker
necro: death shroud stability, flesh worm (has to be positioned already) or spectral walk as stunbreakers (beware, necro stunbreakers have a long cooldown. if you’re not good at dodgeing, go for stability as soon as his animation starts!)
engi: rocket boots work nice as stunbreakers, bit slow cooldown, use elixir r as a secondary stunbreaker (you can also throw it to ress people being pulled in). elixir s as an ‘oh kitten’ button is also nice
warri: shake it off as stunbreaker, balanced stance for stability, warhorn as secondary weapon gives you more dodges, otherwise shield to block
guardian: just ignore it ;-) or use the ground-aoe for stability or just f3 before he pullsother classes I don’t know well enough yet..
thief: sword 2 maybe? or just a simple smokefield in advance? only just started with thief, don’t know him well enough yet. a headshot of pistol 4 might even work to interrupt the pull, so he goes immediately to his spin attack (though your melee players will hate you for it, if they don’t have the complete 3 seconds to get away before he spins)
mesmer blink? phantasmal whatever, the projectile reflector thing, does cleansing mantra stunbreak?
ranger has several jump back abilities, they might work. really no idea
Thief – Smoke screen, especially if you’re got the Master of Deception trait – this will also help others. Shadowstep, although the recharge isn’t great and requires a ground-target. Roll for Initiative, but again recharge.
Mesmer – While the cleansing mantra doesn’t, the Mantra of Concentration will both give stability and break stun. if you’ve got good timing, Distortion works too, especially with the IP trait.
Ranger is the only class that should have any problems – RaO gives stability, but has a long downtime. Lightning Reflexes has a longish cooldown and is bugged to disable on KD.
The thing with Kholer, is that even though almost every class has excellent utilities that will help, I very rarely see pugs change their skills to take them, and instead charge in with the same build they fight everything else with.
Being able to change skills mid-dungeon is a very powerful option, and yet wildly underused. I’m hoping that the removal of res-rushing will get people to put more fore-thought into what they take into a fight.
I opened around 100 jewelry boxes – as well as vendor-junk items (which added up give a fairly decent way of getting gold from excess karma), there’s lodestones (depending on what you get, worth a lot more), a mini-pet (pretty much worthless and ugly), obsi-shards (great if you’re after legendary, mostly worthless otherwise) and transformation tonics (depending on personal preference – I find them useless).
So it’s mixed, but yes, there are good things available.
it’s an easy dungeon minus the knights. the starting vine part is easy as pie if your party isn’t dumb enough to try and go ranged. sit in melee range and it won’t be any trouble.
i’ve soloed it as a melee with a ranged party after they all kept wiping instantly.
class issue nobody takes ever in account .-.
hint some classes/builds will die as fast in melee.
Which classes/builds are an issue?
My last run of it was with mesmer, using sword/focus against the vines. Has no problems. While not an outright glass cannon, I’m closer to that than bunker.
imo, TA Up-Up is the easiest path in any dungeon. If you’re after TA armor, you should be good. If you’re on warrior though, remember to bring a Longbow instead of a rifle, as the rifle has trouble hitting blossoms.
Completely agree.
I don’t want to sound like an elitist or anything, but higher level fractals aren’t easy. I’ve done at least one path of every dungeon. I haven’t done arah path 4 but barring that, 30+ fractals seems more difficult than any other PvE content I’ve experienced in this game.
Higher levels you need to have everyone pulling their weight. Plain and simple. You need to be able to pull your own weight or you bring the party down. It’s not about being an elitist, it’s about wanting to be able to get it done. And honestly we can explain everything a million times over, but if you’re not quite skilled enough for high level fotm, or you use a poor build, then you just cause wipes.
People like to complain about elitist but look at it this way, if one person isn’t skilled enough to complete the fractal and is constantly dying and doesn’t pull his weight, whose in the wrong here? If you can’t pull your weight then you’re a burden on the party and should be replaced.
“Pull your weight” is by itself an elitist comment though (no offense.) Especially since someone may expect another player to play by his/her rules (which may be unwarranted, or his/her own perception of what is “right”), or else use specific builds/skills/gear, etc. In short, there’s no established standard about what “pulling your own weight” is, and to pretend that there is does reek of elitism.
(For the record, I wouldn’t also go to high level Fractals for which I lack sufficient Agony resistance, so I do understand that most people would want party members to be somewhat well-prepared for Agony, elitists or otherwise.)
I would hate that a random person that knows NOTHING of my playing skill judges me “not good enough” because I made some mistake, appeared to “not be listening”, or worse, was blamed for party deaths/wipes because I was not “following orders”, even though my “rebellion” was totally unintentional, and their deaths may not have been my fault at all. Make sure a player is INTENTIONALLY slowing you down, or else is really, really “bad” (how bad can a player who has been playing forever can be?) before you make snap judgements about his/her playing ability and worse, kick him/her out.
I understand you may not be that kind of player I mentioned, but it does happen a lot, and will still happen. Elitism is not my thing, and I fear Fractals of the Mist, which does fosters such bad attitudes, will never be my cup of tea either.
I also understand that elitism is sometimes a personality thing, so if that’s how you are, so be it; but I am not that way, and that’s OK too (we just shouldn’t play together if that’s the case, which is fine.)
Here’s the thing though : There’s a place for unexperienced people to go in fractals – the low levels. There, things are much more forgiving (this goes for both combat and non-combat things like the Swamp fractal time allowance). On top of that, anyone experienced in a group at this level can expect people may not know what to do, and teach accordingly.
The problem is unexperienced people are now avoiding the low levels completely.
It might sound elitist to you to expect that when you get a group for a higher level fractal that everyone be already familiar with all the encounters and not need explaining, but that’s because this is the more advanced section.
The reason they’re avoiding the low levels is because the drops are better higher up. It’s basically being selfish; wanting a reward they’re not yet practiced enough to get, and as a result, people who have put in the time to learn are suffering for this selfishness.
There are some in GW2, but they’re rather out-of-the-way. There’s one in Divinity, and one in LA, as well as the main hall in Hoelbrak (Pretty much the whole Norn city is a tavern)
The main thing they would need to have in order to get the busy atmosphere of players you’re after is a reason to be there. In other MMOs, its often rested XP, or specific merchants.
What would you suggest GW2 have for it’s taverns in order to get people in the door?