Guild Wars 2

So basically OP is surprised that refusing to play optimally is less effective than playing effectively. Truely staggering.

It’s kinda important for us to know what content you are looking to do to answer your question about HoT elite specs specifically. Are you doing casual PvE, end-game PvE, PvP, roaming in WvW, zerging in WvW or some other content?

“Giving them no reason to play the raids any further other than the low rng drops.”

Nobody does raids for fun? Is it just me? Oh… ok

There are so many threads about this topic. Do some research before creating another. Start with the dungeon/raids subforum

I play GW2 so I bought it. Got a lot of hours from base game and HoT. Gonna play PoF a lot as well.

So is the issue the story or the title? There are loads of people who like where the story is going and nobody is forcing you to like the story. If it’s about the title you can roleplay that and call yourself Mr Muzzle for all I care but I wouldn’t want to be called that. Going with the general term is the most logical one to go with.

Spurnshadow.3678:

FrizzFreston.5290:

I don’t really mind the range nerf…. And I main guard.
It might be because I always saw the weapon as a support weapon. Which it now may do even better… though Im unsure how much it matters in comparison to other professions.

I wouldnt mind it getting a more physical looking staff swipe animation for it though. Never lliked wave of wrath.

I don’t think you main guard. The staff isn’t a support weapon. Mace / shield or focus is. The staff is the only midrange damage weapon. The auto attack is the only real damage the weapon does. The orb is meh, and reserved for healing anyway. The symbol does poor aoe damage. That leaves the auto attack. For 5 years this has been the case and has never been an issue. It’s designed to be 600 range because it hits 5 enemies. That means that on average, you are doing the same damage as the auto attack on the GS or hammer which only hits 3. But with 300 range, one will now, probably not hit 5 targets, so the damage is much less. The difference between 300 and 180 is pretty neglegable, especially considering all the movement in the game.

With the staff, we sacrifice having higher burst damage for the other abilities, but if relegated to 300 range, it’s probably better to go with a true melee weapon which will do more dps. And if we want to do some support, a one hand melee with a shield or focus.

And to all you people complaining about a loot stick, I get just as much using a staff on my necro, or a tempest, or thief with a shortbow, etc. If you’re gonna farm stuff, there are some builds and classes that are better at it. Don’t be angry that you aren’t getting as much stuff on a pistol thief, or whatever.

The staff is now totally useless.

Scepter is the midrange weapon for guardians and staff was supposed to be support.

Note that for raids dps classes vary in effectiveness as each encounter has different mechanics. For example power elementalist obliterates big hitboxes but condi classes may pull ahead on smaller bosses. Support classes (chrono, druid, PS war) on the other hand are less volatile on build effectiveness in general.

Valkyrie reaper is very enjoyable as well. You end up with tons of hp+larger life force pool. Best thing is that in shroud you can still do high crits with AA if you take spite/soul reaping/reaper traitlines and deathly perception from soul reaping

As mentioned above necromancer and warrior have the highest health. That said necromancer can be quite deceptive as they don’t have much in the way of damage mitigation and active defenses. Warrior has heal that converts damage into healing and blocks/evades on weapon skills while necromancer has none except for standard 2 dodges.

If you want to be tanky and still do some damage then power isn’t an option so going condi is your best bet. Maybe a variant of condi PS with trailblazer? You’ still need to land critical hits to provide might for your allies, so changing geomancy for accuracy is a must.

Congratulations and welcome! I hope your story inspires others to try out raiding too. It’s a lot of fun when you get into the right mindset.

Going for druid instead of necro at this moment is a good idea as they are in demand. I advice you to expand your roster from there with a chrono next and dps class/warrior afterwards.

Well done sir, well done.

It’s aetherpath for sure. There are so many mechanics there that other dungeons don’t have. It’s also one of the few dungeons that didn’t just become stupidly easy after elite specs as there’s always the possibility to mess up ooze escort with newbies.

Mostly it’s the mirror comp with the exception of Deimos and maybe Cairn. On large hitboxes ele pulls mostly ahead (gorse, sloth, KC, Samarog) from other dps classes. On Sloth and Xera try to use power classes as on Sloth he loses condis in every sleep phase and Xera converts condis to boons. On matt lower theoretical dps from condi mes might be better + you get reflects. All in all the core 6 support classes are mostly the same and dps changes according to mechanics by the boss.

Rednik.3809:

NotOverlyCheesy.9427:

Easy mode will not help anyone get into raiding and by raiding I mean doing the normal mode. The only thing easy mode will do is letting people experience the story once and then they’re out for good.
Much better way to get people raiding is by using the tools that the community is providing out of the goodness of their heart. There are a lot of training groups for example posting on reddit. Taking part in a training group will help you become a good raider. You will also enjoy the story that much more because the encounters matter and are challenging instead of a roflstomp easymode.

“Tools that the community is providing out of the goodness of their heart” basically means a spectacular design failure. Basic raid education should be handled by the game itself, not rely on good will of random people.

The debate of should Anet or the community organize training is a completely different debate. I’m saying that there are tools available for people to get into raiding which you agree with in your post hence making raid accessible.

Easy mode will not help anyone get into raiding and by raiding I mean doing the normal mode. The only thing easy mode will do is letting people experience the story once and then they’re out for good.
Much better way to get people raiding is by using the tools that the community is providing out of the goodness of their heart. There are a lot of training groups for example posting on reddit. Taking part in a training group will help you become a good raider. You will also enjoy the story that much more because the encounters matter and are challenging instead of a roflstomp easymode.

All the classes are fine right now except for necro and rev. Nothing OP about condi ranger if it’s on par with other classes.

I’m getting flashbacks from that plane joke Anet pulled off on April fools. The culture of outrage never ceases to amaze me.

As a somewhat serious raider it’s impossible for me to play just one class as I view most of my characters as tools to be used against the challenges I’m facing. It’s a big perk to be able to adapt to what the squad needs at any given point.

Instead of thinking individual builds it’s better to think about what role the build achieves. If you end up with 10 healers or tanks you’re gonna have a bad time. Having a balanced composition of dps, healers, tanks and supports will aid you with your fight more than having an individual meta build.

It’s not time to nerf the meta events and it’s important that events fail or otherwise there’s is no point. Just learn to use the tools available (LFG) and the game mechanics. For example leaving one mobile enemy alive while defending camps during the night in VB will stop additional waves from spawning.

I don’t see too many complaining about the wealthiest people in game tbh. To me this thread seems like someone is just fishing for brags and compliments because of their “huge” service to the game while trying to rustle a few jimmies. Dude, you’re just a part of the game’s economy like everybody else.

Rytlock Trombone and jungle Faren made me smile. First raid boss kills also make me smile always.

OP is contradicting himself pretty hard here. Caithe and Faolain’s love story was there from start of the game. Also dragons were original bad guys of GW2. Saying you want to get rid of those is moving to a different direction than originally intended. Yet OP wants a more conservative approach and doesn’t want the game to evolve and is affraid of new employees’ vision.

Braham acting like a sane person would be quite a surprise.

I disagree with OP. Not every fight needs to use every tool you have. If that was the case then every boss would be the same as we use all of our tools. Doing specific things gives bosses flavour and a unique touch.
Trash is called trash for a reason, I’d take a boss fight over elite pack any day.
Having said these things you’re entitled to your opinion and I’m sorry to hear you’re not enjoying the fractal as much as the rest of us. Saying that the fractal is a step back is just plain wrong however as most seem to be enjoying it.

For druid to be able to heal you it’s important to be able to take a hit without going down instantly. I’d recommend power reaper for their high hp pool and the ability to generate might on their own. Just keep in mind that druids can’t heal you while you’re in reaper shroud.

SoI was big but reducing quickness stacks from 9 to 5 too was even bigger deal. Using your elite to share quickness now will override longer duration stacks making you share less quickness. What a wonderful balance of skills, bravo.

http://qtfy.enjin.com/ranger

Few builds that you may want to look into. Note that the druid builds are mostly for support and highest pure damage option is SB/axe&torch core ranger build. All weapon sets are definitely not equal in terms of damage output if that was the question.

CptAurellian.9537:

There’s still more than enough space to stay within boonsharing range when social and toxic are active. Likewise, 4 or 5 melees around a small hitbox target aren’t a big issue. It’s just highly annoying when there are some people in a group who think they are need to be a bouncing ball on speed.

Okay sure maybe very dangerous is a bit over the top but it certainly discourages melee more than ranged.

Fractals are working as intended. If you’re not good enough to complete T4 then you don’t deserve the reward. Sure it may sound harsh but that’s why scaling is there in the first place.

However the lack of build diversity is completely on Anet. If they keep making punishing instabilities for melee classes who already have to deal most with mob mechanics the easiest way to victory is, surprise surprise, an effective range comp.

The new instability where random things spawn now and then is amazing as it spices the fractal with unpredictability that doesn’t seem unfair as most of the things are okay to deal with as long as you know what you’re doing. Social awkwardness and toxic trail to lesser degree on the other hand are terrible instabilities in my opinion. They discourage efficient play and staying together as a team for boonsharing. Also having more than one melee class on a single enemy becomes very very dangerous.

Lazarus the Dire: “Countless generations will suffer for your actions this day!”

The exact wording of the line is very interesting to me. Most would see these only as vengeful last words but I think this could be a genuine warning. As a mursaat he knew about the dragons which were about to be awake so he thought that without him the world would have no chance to beat the elder dragons.

Troll’s revenge before gliding was a lot more difficult than this one. It doesn’t have checkpoints so one wrong move back then would ruin your day.

I would rather not have that… Such a huge power creep for raids and WvW. It’s better to have somewhat balanced content than stuff that’s fallen off the curve. Dungeons shared this fate when elite specs were introduced and now they are such a faceroll and boring. Would be a shame if the same happened to raids this early.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

NotOverlyCheesy.9427:

I think removing the enrage timer would be a good idea as an optional thing for people to learn the mechanics of the fight. However this mode can not give out any rewards as doing the real thing should be rewarded properly.

The thing is just doing the fight does the same thing, you don’t need to remove the timers to learn the fights.

I don’t mind the enrage personally since I can get my kills each week but maybe there’s something to it since these threads seem to pop up all the time. On the other hand you are right that people could just go in there to learn the fights and not seek the kill but people are scared of failure and don’t really want to do it. Finding a middle ground here to get people motivated to start seems to be quite hard with all of these different opinions going around. The way I’ve been handling the issue is to have just fun runs sometimes and grabbing a totally newbie friend with my regular raid team and getting them like a VG kill to show the content.

I think removing the enrage timer would be a good idea as an optional thing for people to learn the mechanics of the fight. However this mode can not give out any rewards as doing the real thing should be rewarded properly.

Raids are the only thing why I’ve logged in to the game in the last week. Nothing else is as replayable as that content for me. Sure I like the living story but I’ll do it once and wait for the next release to come in 2 months.

I’d suggest using booster on necro since they are kinda slow. With thief you can get around extremely fast so map completion leveling is better overall.

Old swamp was a faceroll and way too fast for the potential rewards. I’ve seen so many crying in raid threads for difficult 5 man content that this had to be a good update for those people and even for us raiders who love to push ourselves. Lastly git gud, if you play your class right you’ll be rewarded in the end.

The meta build for necro uses a scepter so I’ll drop this here http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Reaper_-_Viper_Horror

If you’re walking in the jungle for the first time you’ll find lots of content to go through and the april patch made stuff a lot more enjoyable. I’d say jump in!

Anet has stated that composition does matter in raids and the group you tried to join probably wanted to have a chance at killing the boss, even if it was a training run. Warriors are actually in a good position right now for raids since you want to have 2 PS to buff your party. However, they are also very limited to the 2 due to not doing the most damage so you need to expand your character pool if you want to fit in groups more consistently. Eles, druids and chronotanks are all in high demand.

Redfeather.6401:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

musu.9205:

Yargesh.4965:

They did not have different currencies in the core Tyria and people constantly asked for specific currencies. They wanted Teq weapons, they wanted wurm ascended and so on. So frankly it was players who kept demanding various currencies that led to them implementing (I agree too many different ones) currencies to everything now.

i agree that players want specific currencies as in the past you can buy anything with gold ,but right now it seems too much ,new players hardly catch up while vets feel too grindy .

and it is certainly a way anet tried to keep map popular .a forced way like any other mmo on the market .

What’s the right balance then?

• People hate on RNG: “it’s not fair if your luck is bad” (and people tend to think their own luck is worse than average)
• People hate on gold alone: “you shouldn’t just be able to farm with a credit card”
• People hate on tokens: “ANet just wants to sell more inventory upgrades”
• People hate on map currencies: “stop adding new currencies”
• People hate on collections: “it’s too much running around and the same for everyone — what happened to freedom to play as you like?”

Each mechanic that MMOs use has pluses and minuses. Everyone has their own preferences, so no single tool is going to be appreciated by each and every player.

How would you balance all the different methods of earning loot so that most people are happy and very few are deeply unhappy?

Maybe let players represent an organization and fill up a meter as they gain xp. At milestones they earn a reward, and unlock new tabs in an organization’s NPC seller list. The unlocked seller tab items could just sell for gold.

It’s like a cross between reward tracks used in PvP/WvW and guilds. Only it would be it’s own thing specific to PvE. And you could add some role playing to it by giving xp bonuses to certain actions fitting the organization you are representing. Like representing the durmond priory gives you xp bonus for gathering/mining and such.

An interesting suggestion for sure. However, how would you price stuff like the bloodstone backpiece in gold after the initial xp grind. Wouldn’t it stop people from ever doing any other method to get a backpiece if they can just buy one with gold? Would it be gated for 1 equip per char/account? Would you have to reset the xp if you want another backpiece?

Wow, that’s awesome. Respect.

I think the current currency system is pretty good at what it’s doing. No stupid RNG for rare stuff and players are able to see their progress towards a goal.

I really loved early HoT power reaper but I would be lying if I said condi build is any worse. Getting a good epidemic is always so satisfying and having tons of minions is a lot of fun. So I really like necro’s now. The only thing I hope for is that they’d make chill a stacking condi and deathly chill back to what it was.

Nothing against a good ol’ love triangle if it makes sense in the story. If it’s forced it will turn into

Best way is to get into a training guild using the guild recruitment subforum. I also heavily encourage getting at least ascended weapon and trinkets. Weapon is a bit of a tough one but you might get lucky from fractals or there’s also the option of doin’ elite spec collection. Rings you can get from fractals quite easily and other trinkets you can get with guild commendations and laurels.

Metabattle is a good reference site to get yourself started with how you build your character. Bring positive, curious and humble attitude and you’re set.

Happy raiding!