Guild Wars 2

I would have to say elementalist. They’re good at everything and pugs love them. Engineer also fits exactly what you described but they’re less popular with pug groups and their power damage is behind elementalist.

Ging.6485:

Painbow.6059:

Ging.6485:

Kind of hard to say. For example Uncategorized as long as you have a mesmer, the other 4 can be anything and it will go just as smoothly. Maybe Mesmer, PS, and 3 Necros.

For 100 Mai Trin, 4 Necros and a Druid.

For Solid Ocean, literally anything is the same.

Thaumanova probably 5 Necros.

Each fractal has a different comp that would be optimal. 5 Necros cover the most bases though.

While it can be easy, stacking generally more than 2 necros is not the fastest option. You want classes like warrior to provide offensive buffs, along with chrono for quickness/alacrity. Also classes like engineer for stealth/blinds. That being said, having a necromancer in a group in high level fractals is a staple, as it has very good consistent damage, epidemic and boon stripping. But you should usually avoid taking more than two unless you want to start losing out on DPS

Thaumanova though, unless you want to become a super coordinated team, pretty much benefits from people being far away from each other. The only part that could benefit from balls to the wall DPS is the green slime. The Anomaly however is more about not falling through the floor, the easiest way to do that is to stay far apart. Now if you play with a static group and coordinate well, sure there is probably a way to keep 25 stacks of might up on everyone. If you want an easy mindless win though, just rolling 5 necros provides that.

The OP asked for the ‘best’ (meaning most optimal – also assuming team mates don’t suck) team comp for high level fractals overall, not relogging for every single encounter.

Ging.6485:

Kind of hard to say. For example Uncategorized as long as you have a mesmer, the other 4 can be anything and it will go just as smoothly. Maybe Mesmer, PS, and 3 Necros.

For 100 Mai Trin, 4 Necros and a Druid.

For Solid Ocean, literally anything is the same.

Thaumanova probably 5 Necros.

Each fractal has a different comp that would be optimal. 5 Necros cover the most bases though.

While it can be easy, stacking generally more than 2 necros is not the fastest option. You want classes like warrior to provide offensive buffs, along with chrono for quickness/alacrity. Also classes like engineer for stealth/blinds. That being said, having a necromancer in a group in high level fractals is a staple, as it has very good consistent damage, epidemic and boon stripping. But you should usually avoid taking more than two unless you want to start losing out on DPS

It really depends which fractal to be honest. I personally like 1 engi, 1 druid, 1 reaper, 1 PS and 1 chrono for daily runs. It provides high consistent damage through condis as well as covering all the offensive and defensive support. Tempest is also pretty good in fractals due to the damage and general versatility of the class.

It would be a bad idea to make raids any more easy than they currently are considering timers can be ignored completely in a good group, and you can skip a lot of mechanics with good dps e.g no updraft Gorseval. I would support a hard mode, but considering raids are already pretty easy and they were designed to be more challenging content, anything easier would be an insult to the reason for the creation of raids in the first place.
There are plenty of videos and teaching groups out there for raids, there really is no excuse not to be able to run them by now

Guard has high DPS and high utility. It does not need any buffs.

Amineo.8951:

Painbow.6059:

It depends on the content. For wing 1 engi is better because it has high damage as well as good CC which is useful for VG/gorseval. For wing 2, necro is better because of condition manipulation. So it’s really up to you. Necromancer also has its uses in wing 1 with epidemic and high ranged condition damage, also it’s a lot easier than engineer.

Doesn’t Engi bring some sustain with the healing burst?

Yes, it does a lot of things better than necromancer and has higher condition damage, but necro is better in some cases where there are a lot of conditions you can manipulate like Matthias. The healing burst is nice though

It depends on the content. For wing 1 engi is better because it has high damage as well as good CC which is useful for VG/gorseval. For wing 2, necro is better because of condition manipulation. So it’s really up to you. Necromancer also has its uses in wing 1 with epidemic and high ranged condition damage, also it’s a lot easier than engineer.

If they can’t do the content it is entirely their fault, either for not getting people together for a raid, not joining a raid group/guild or just not being good enough, all of which can be changed.

Without raids there is nothing to push pve players into getting better. Since raids the quality of pugs has generally increased I think

I’m red/green colour-blind myself, the only boss really it can be an issue is the first boss, just mainly due to the amount of effects on top of the boss it can be hard to see the floor lighting up or the blue circles, but to be honest it’s still fairly easy. On Gorseval it really doesn’t matter and I haven’t had any problems on Sabetha due to colour-blindness as much as inexperience due to inactivity.

Sick heals mate

It’s just like any other PvE content, once you get used to it, it’s as easy as anything else. Smoke scales for instance, dodge when they start evade hitting you. When they smoke field just move out and then burst it down once it moves out of it. Just requires a little more brains than standard PvE mobs. Got no problem in Berserker gear.

Yeah I understand that, but I think the party wide life steal as well as extra sustain you get and movement speed without swiftness or locust signet is all pretty nice too. Vampric support is one of the unique things about necromancer. Come HoT I think blood magic will be even better since the utility and sustain it provides will be strong in raids. But it is slightly less damage

Could drop soul reaping if capping vuln. Allows you to take blood magic instead for vampric support. Using dagger mainly until 50%

Boss seal

Sarif.1827:

Swagger.1459:

It’s nice to know that you only have 1 level 80 character and that you prefer to insult player feedback on this matter, but yet say stuff like the bolded above…

Players are entitled to their feedback especially when they have a heck of a lot more level 80 characters than you.

I do apologize if I offended or seem to be attacking you. Just because I decided to not be an alt-fanatic doesn’t mean mine or anyone else’s feedback is any more-or-less important.

What does having more than one level 80 toon got to do with this? How does having one of every class at 80 make you any more or less informed then me? At the start of the game maybe this might have been the case, but this game is three years old already. There are more than enough videos, wikis, guides and other resources out there so anyone can learn all they need to know going forward.

Do I have to do as much work as you do to “unlock” my character’s full power? No, but then again, having different toons and wanting to keep them all competitive should mean you get to put in twice, three times, <Insert number of toons here> times the amount of work that I have chosen to do. This also means you have more options at your disposal and the cost for this, in this game, is Time.

My biggest problem with Threads like this are all the demands for double standards and the emotional arguments about how it’s “Not how we want to play, new options need to be put into the game just for us.”

I dislike PvP a LOT… yet, there is no alternative way for me to get a HoTs Legendary then to PvP both in WvW and sPvP.

There is no way for me to get certain achievements or titles other than to PvP.

Because that is how Anet has set up the game.

Why shouldn’t there be some PvE only rewards? Because you and others don’t want to deal with it?

Which brings me to this:

There is a HUGE difference between optional fluff skin items and something that deals with core gameplay for your character. I totally believe Anet should lock skins and minis to certain content to provide incentives. Because at the end of the day, that’s optional. Something like elite specs or stat gear like ascended though? No, that should really be available through multiple avenues.

This is a valid point, and a good one at that. My only argument to this would be…

The Elite Specs and Ascended Gear are not a part of the “core” aspects of the professions.

While they certainly help a great deal, and offer new and interesting powers we haven’t had yet, it is not considered a “core” aspect. Because they are not “core” aspects, then that means they are “optional” aspects, which as you pointed out… are locked behind content to provide incentives to play other game modes.

So then the argument boils down to: “What is a Core Feature of the Characters?” and I think that can be answered by asking “What do Free-Players have access to?” Anything not on that list, Which includes most of the HoTs content, at least in my opinion is optional content.

I am open to any arguments that would stress otherwise.

It certainly is core to certain professions, for example necromancer is getting a MASSIVE boost compared to what is necro now in pve terms. Or chronomancer for example is a massive boost from mesmer

From a speed clear perspective in PvE you need them

Sidenti.6035:

Menadena.7482:

xarallei.4279:

Swagger.1459:

xarallei.4279:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

If players wanna “lvl” their characters via 5k tomes, fine by me, but don’t demand everything. Elite specs should not be easy to unlock.

I for one would not wanna see every “n00b” unlocking the elite spec of his class in 5 seconds…

First you don’t wanna “grind” for exotic armor, then you don’t wanna “grind” for Hero Points, then…

I’m sorry you can’t have it all from the moment you logged in. This is not an FPS game. It’s extremely casual friendly as it is already, don’t ridicule it…

This attitude is very anti-WvW. Many of us leveled our characters in WvW and have characters that are pretty much exclusive to WvW. There should be a way to obtain hero points in WvW. Not to mention it’s going to be hell for those with tons of alts.

I find it weird that Anet said in the last Guild Chat that they understand doing certain things like world exploration over and over again on alts is a huge chore. That is the reason they eliminated it from the requirements for the new legendaries. But here they are making things miserable with this 170 point hero point requirement to unlock elite specs. If I have to do that on my main, fine I’ll do it. But having to do it for every single alt character is very miserable.

170?? what the …. Are you ……. serious? My main is ok, but there is no way I’m running through pve maps again with the rest of my 4 alts to achieve 680 hero points.

haha, and that doesn’t even include the optional armor things for each spec. That brings it up to something like 250 hp according to the data mine. But at least that stuff isn’t necessary. But yeah, the 170 is to get the elite spec alone which is pretty outrageous. If it was account bound I don’t think I’d mind, but it isn’t. So you have to run around on each character. AND that’s not the only thing, rumor has it you might have to do some kind of collection thing in pve first before even being able to put hero points toward your elite. Though I think that’s heavy speculation because someone noticed some sort of elite spec collection during beta. And because they said this in their final countdown post:

“overcoming challenges in the jungle to unlock your elite specialization”

So that makes it sound like not only do we have to deal with hero points, but some other thing as well. -_-

That would be interesting. If all of your characters could contribute HPs. I have about 850 HPs between all my characters but none are at the 170 (and the 250 is impossible).

What constantly annoys me are the ‘170 HPs are not big deal’ people. Sure, if you foolishly unlocked all of the skills and traits when given the exact # of HPs to do so and before the 170 was datamined. Or maybe if you have every single HP in the game. HPs basically come in two varieties: ‘this is boring but I will need to grind it on all my characters anyway’ or ‘we who are about to die several times (and still be bored) salute you’.

I have 170 hero points just from playing the game. What are you doing so completely wrong that you’re having a hard time getting hero points?

No, really. This I gotta hear.

Assuming you already have spent all of them with the patch in June, the only way to get them is open world hero points for map completion. Most people find the open world very boring, easy and a waste of time since it provides nothing challenging whilst offering very little in the way of loot. So essentially unless you have done map completion on all your characters the hero point system is going to be a massive pain in the kitten . And the majority of players have NOT done map completion on the majority of their characters because its a waste of time unless you want shinies.

Healix.5819:

Hero points are meant to be a limited resource, so anything that allows you to farm them isn’t going to happen. Next expansion for example, you’re going to have to play through the new zones to gather hero points in order to unlock the specialization. This is comparable to leveling through an expansion in other MMOs, though oddly, GW2 has the less casual implementation.

Only WvW could really get an alternative method by simply offering a secondary WvW-only build. For a general solution, they could sell hero challenges like how GW1 had skill books. The gem store would be the obvious choice, but then why not sell levels, waypoints, etc.

skill points were never a limited resource, so why should hero points be? Why should players have to spend hours grinding for a specialization on multiple characters of the same boring content? (yes HoT exploring may be fun the first time but I highly doubt they can make map exploration fun)

Swagger.1459:

xarallei.4279:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

If players wanna “lvl” their characters via 5k tomes, fine by me, but don’t demand everything. Elite specs should not be easy to unlock.

I for one would not wanna see every “n00b” unlocking the elite spec of his class in 5 seconds…

First you don’t wanna “grind” for exotic armor, then you don’t wanna “grind” for Hero Points, then…

I’m sorry you can’t have it all from the moment you logged in. This is not an FPS game. It’s extremely casual friendly as it is already, don’t ridicule it…

This attitude is very anti-WvW. Many of us leveled our characters in WvW and have characters that are pretty much exclusive to WvW. There should be a way to obtain hero points in WvW. Not to mention it’s going to be hell for those with tons of alts.

I find it weird that Anet said in the last Guild Chat that they understand doing certain things like world exploration over and over again on alts is a huge chore. That is the reason they eliminated it from the requirements for the new legendaries. But here they are making things miserable with this 170 point hero point requirement to unlock elite specs. If I have to do that on my main, fine I’ll do it. But having to do it for every single alt character is very miserable.

170?? what the …. Are you ……. serious? My main is ok, but there is no way I’m running through pve maps again with the rest of my 4 alts to achieve 680 hero points.

That is the amount data minded. I completely agree, I wish to play druid, reaper and chrono but i seriously can’t be bothered to grind out all those hero points. It’s essentially grind gating players from content which they have been hyping for ages. Very bad move unless they implement a system to getting hero points alternatively.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

I meant ascended gear not exotic sorry. My point remains the same though. I know there will be loads of revenants 5 mins after launch. That does not change a thing. I don’t see why someone who lvl’d legit way and did world exploration should be on par with a 5min old character.

Also sorry but if you wanna have 10 characters with unlocked elite specs, you should work for it. Like the PvE players had to go through WvW maps for world completion and like PvP players had to go through PvE to get a decent looking appearance.

Again this is not an FPS game no matter how much players who log in once in a blue moon to look in the sky& stars want it to be.

No I don’t support the typical MMO grind where you have to go through the same content for 1 million times in order to get end-game stuff, but I don’t support giving everything for free either.

It’s hardly free if it requires items such as fractal relics or dungeon tokens because it requires players to actually work at the content within the game. I think it is harsh to force players into grinding for an elite specialization if they really hate the content

A lot of players have already dumped hero points into specializations and don’t want to have to farm open world content in order to play the new specializations. How about making Hero Points purchasable through means such as spirit shards or fractal relics, e.g 10 spirit shards = 1 hero point or 100 fractal relics = 1 hero point. This would give players alternative ways of achieving hero points whilst still playing and promoting content. Other examples could include Karma even

Also from the UK experiencing exactly the same issues, half 6 until too late for me to be awake and fine for the rest of the day. I’m from down south (Hampshire)

TheLastNobody.8319:

scratches head. We’re actually wanted in fractals? …..dear Grenth I’ve been playing the wrong content.

Before I played necro I was always skeptical at having one in the party, but after playing it myself I completely reject the view that it does not offer anything worthwhile to the party. Since the vampric aura change along with a new projectile block necro has become a solid defensive support class while still being able to provide very high amounts of vulnerability to the party.

Insane amounts of lag in the evening. Not on my end, fix pls

You either use dagger if you don’t need vuln/might/critchance, if you are lacking any of these things use a DS build. Necromancer is very underrated in fractals as a class. It offers a solid projectile block, strong boon removal, strong vuln stacking, partywide life steal, blind field, very good control, good ranged damage, very good sustain, high aoe burst, strong condition removal, blink and teleport, along with carry ability with transfusion. Just some examples.

Amineo.8951:

It’s just boring, not fun, cheap aswell as glitchy for people not having good CPU because they can’t see some AOE circles, every other boss is fair, but this one is frustrating mainly for that reason, either remove this or change it and do something similar to the Molten Facility…

I think you identified the problem, bad cpu

It will be less of a thing after they increase the CD on feel my wrath to 45 seconds. 5 guardians is viable, it’s not the fastest but its certainly very smooth and probably best for pugging

“Icebow getting 50% damage nerf and now affects 3 targets per hit (down from 5)”

About time if you ask me

http://dulfy.net/2015/09/26/gw2-twitchcon-skill-balance-update-preview/

I would still kick low levels just because they lack damage massively, generally newer players have a lesser understanding of mechanics (2kish AP) so I can understand why they get kicked. If you compare the kill times of the video to lv 80 ones it is much, much slower

Taku.6352:

Trident 5 -> Spear 32 -> DS 511111111 till you get below 50% life force -> spear 32 and auto till full LF -> trident 5 -> DS and so on. And spam the 2 wells whenever.

Nothing calculated or optimal but what I’d use if I’d have to do UW stuff.

I think spear 5 is a dps increase over the auto attack, and using trident 4 for a sink is always good for making it easier for eles to rush with water 5, but you are right

Necromancer and engineer are the funnest classes. Elementalist is the best but pugs are too stupid to play ranger/necro and engineer so they are not welcome in pug groups, best stick to the meta

Eirdyne.9843:

Hi,

I don’t mind doing the dungeons that are around, but I’d like to do them more than one way.

Here’s a fix.

Remove subject words like: OS, Meta, Metazerker, Zerker, Berzerker, Berserker, and etc from being possible to post in the group advertisement listing.

Words that would be allowable: Guard, Thief, Necro, and etc.. ie only class names. This way we can actually play the game.

You built this game so we could play different variations of the classes. Why reward players for breaking your game?

laokoko.7403:

Kordash.2197:

laokoko.7403:

Kordash.2197:

laokoko.7403:

And the expectation that a pug can 1 bucket burn dredge boss? Seriously how often does that happen? Maybe 1 in 10 runs? that is too high expectation on a pug.

I’m doing it 9 times out of 10 runs (when we roll the dredge facility obviously) in pugs (meaning i’m alone, with no buddies/guildies/friends in the party). Asking for meta party and gear checking. Works well. I even teach that to whoever want to learn it.

It all comes down to personnal experience, so we could go on this topic for hours, that won’t be usefull

So you going to teach every pug you do? Kind of pointless. Did every pug you do run fractal in 30-40 minutes?

Average pug do it in 40-50 mintues anyway.

Average is 40 minutes, with the worst case being 55/1 hour. Strangely, i got my worst run times with guildies, but mostly because we’re running around like headless chickens doing kitten. And yes, if they’re listening and up to learn something new (for them), i’ll teach them. If it doesn’t work first try, the second always works. It’s not pointless, since it helps improving the global skill level (and it’s good for everyone).

Fractal pretty much become the new cof path 1. Anyone still doing it is usually quite experience.

Many people(guidie) play together for the social experience. They are not actually your experienced fractal player.

Elitism is actually quite annoying. I don’t mind elitist player which is good blaming people. Like someone says “oh why don’t you put your ice bow near me”.

But the elitist player who blame other people for their own death is really annoying. “Oh I die because you didn’t aegis or condition removal for me”. That is one of the most annoying thing I ever heard. You can pretty much do fractal solo or duo. How is your own death have anything to do with other people.

While I agree with you to an extent, examples can include guardian not using aegis when channeling icebow 5 as the imbued shaman unbubbles. No reflects from guard on end of harpy boss, no blinds from engi/thief ect. It’s not necessary but when you invite someone of a certain class into the party you expect them to know their class mechanics, and rely on them to a certain extent, otherwise why have them in the party to begin with, just duo and then sell more slots for gold

Ryn.6459:

I stop reading at the part of dark age and people learn break dungeons… what was your question?

It’s stopped* reading if you are talking about the past tense.

awisome videyo
and i Denno about patches
xDDD

They already leave behind trails and have moving particle effects. They are free of currency and not so hard to get since they improved the drop rate

robertul.3679:

I agree dungeon selling should be illegal. So should supermarkets. I mean the purpose of food is to obtain it and outright buying it kinda ruins the whole experience of gathering berries and slaying wildlife.

It also ruins food because it takes away from the fun and towards effectiveness.

We should also ban vehicles because we were intended to walk and look at the views rather than skip past fields of animals.

Is there some sort of casual uprising brewing, these imbecile posts are becoming an infestation.

Power precision food comes in all shapes and sizes, ranging from 60 power 50 precision to 100 power 70 precision. This is usually a safe and easy bet for many classes. I would recommend Egg Omlets (2s) for a budget option, steak and asparagus for a midway option (around 9s) and truffle steak (20ish?s) for the most expensive option.

Power ferocity- this food is pretty expensive but effective for classes which are capping critical chance since you don’t need the extra precision. I don’t think there is much of a budget option this way, so I would generally avoid power ferocity food unless you really want to min max.

Salads, I only use salads on necromancer myself, since you can use all the skills while still moving, you can get the full effectiveness out of it. The 10% is very expensive at around 50s+ I think. the 6% is around 2s so pretty cheap, I usually settle for the 8% at around 10s a pop. You can also get 8% potions lasting 10 minutes for about 1.5silver from the FGS drake after an event chain. Due to skills such as icebow I would avoid using this food in all classes but necromancer.

Other foods to note are condition duration foods and friend dumplings. Dumplings are a must have for PS warrior due to the might generation and boon duration to make up for lack in traits, works very well with strength runes. Also dumplings are great for low manning/soloing content on many classes due to might generation. Condition duration food is essential for condition builds, such as condi engi/ranger/guard/war. It can range from cheap to expensive with super veggie pizzas giving slightly less than koi cakes at 40% and not 36% condi duration. Also toxic sharpening stones give an extra 10% condition duration but are very expensive. Also a worthy note despite being very expensive (1G) , spicy beans are great for zerk engineer, at 70 power and 40% condi duration providing power and increasing the overall duration of conditions. You can even use condi food with condi duration on zerk engineer for longer fights where the vulnerability generation is useful.

I’m no min maxer and I got no math behind whats best for each class ect, but you will hardly notice the difference in food unless it is condition duration which impacts condition builds massively or golden dumplings on warrior. Hope this helped a little

I’d recommend two elementalists, guardian, warrior and thief or engi for an optimal group. Generally relog if you get dredge to thief or maw to necro/thief if playing the 5th class aside from guard/war and 2 eles. It doesn’t really matter so much though as every class can provide something useful to the group in fractals as long as you know what you are doing.

I can’t blame pugs for using what they call the ‘zerk meta’ – (2 eles, guard war thief usually) as its safe and works pretty much anywhere. Saying that in organized groups it hardly matters what you decide to run anymore

I’ve been testing both builds in fractals on a daily basis and it really comes down to the situation. In dungeons I would recommend zerk for sure because of the burst nature of the fights, but in fractals its more dependent on what you get. Sinister is great for bosses like mossman/bloomhunger/imbuned shaman/svanir shaman ect.., however zerker is still high damage anyway. I think sinister pulls ahead in any group which is less than perfect, due to higher vulnerability application/chill uptime ect. Overall I think some of it comes down to player preference, but its certainly worth making a sinister set for higher level fractals

So I do a lot of fractals/dungeons and find myself salvaging quite frequently. But its very irritating to constantly have to waste clicks and press no to salvaging rares/exotics with a basic/copper o matic kit because I can’t tell the difference between masterwork/exotic and rare colour. Yes i’m colour blind, but its fairly common in men and I don’t think it would be too much stress to make the colours something like Red, Blue, White or just anything which has a very obvious difference, other than what looks like green, green and green (or maybe yellow :/ )

In all honesty though, the ‘meta zerk’ composition is safe, fast and pretty universal in terms of usability. It’s very rare to find a good engineer in pugs for example, thief is just way easier and still has access to stealth. Rangers are usually bear bow kittens, and pugs are too stupid to know portal mechanics. If I wanted to clear dungeons in the fastest time possible on a daily basis with pugs, I would use some sort of ‘elitist’ lfg post. But I don’t get why people whine about LFG’s so much when there is so many PVE guilds out there right now, there really isn’t an excuse not to have a group of people to play with on a daily basis you enjoy playing with.

HwaRyun.1807:

Agreed on Jade Maw. Every time we get that fractal everybody laughs because of how much i groan and complain the second the load into the instance. That fight is needlessly long, tedious and barely has any active mechanics to take part in, not to mention on a 50 it’s just annoying with all the Irukandji you have to kill in a seriously un-fun manner.

Don’t forget the Irukandji’s don’t even drop any loot, making killing them just as rewarding as the satisfaction upon entering jade maw

If you want to remove anything make it Jade Maw, easy and boring time gated piece of kitten. Mai is one of the best fights in the game in terms of mechanics.

Aleth.9630:

Skady.5916:

Aleth.9630:

Not really, definitely can’t replace an ele in terms of DPS and utility. What you could argue for is replacing thief, but the places where you really want thief are:

• Urban (stealth skips, engineer doesn’t have enough without waiting for recharge)
• Dredge (stealth speedrun strategy with traited SR)
• Mai Trin (permastealth)
• Jade Maw (SR for dark field)

Engineer can’t exactly replace it in any of those. And thief has faster Defiance stripping. I enjoy playing with a good engineer, but it’s not on par with thief, unless you don’t get any of those 4 fractals.

I would only agree with Mai Trin and Maw part (the latter is arguably an exploit anyways).

Dredge cage can be done easily with engi (no mobs killed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6x5DIuVU54
Same goes for Urban battleground
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLItHwWS_nY&t=400

P.S. Yes, DPS wise no class can compete with staff ele

• Dredge:
  It’s done using consumables, that’s already shaky ground, but do you think pug engineers know that skip? And even if they do, the rest of the party does? And even then, that they all have the consumables for it? All in an LFG party? That just won’t happen. Don’t forget, we’re talking about accepting random engineers into pugs.
  That run still also takes half the time with thief, is a lot more failsafe since you instantly open 2nd gate with a teleport and do Haste+SR on console.

• Ascalon:
  Showing them “skipping” when they get the shortest path which requires a single blast proves nothing. If they had to go on a long road, which is the case ~80% of the time, they would have to sit around waiting for Smoke Bomb to recharge, or run through without stealth, which is messy in pug parties as hell.

If you trait short fuse and the stealth elixr also you don’t loose more than 10 seconds compared to a thief so it hardly matters

Relog to thief if you get dredge and thief/necro if you get jade maw. You don’t even need any stealth for ascalon, running through as a group keeping up aegis/invulns is kitten. Mai trin, just as quick if people know how to move in the right place. On all the other fractals you don’t really loose anything taking an engineer over a thief. Engineer has much better aoe, better sustained vuln, more blasts and utility along with enough defiance removal, without sacrificing alot of dps to take defiance. It’s funny because pugging is much better on engineer due to a lot more utility yet they want thieves instead because they don’t realise how much they need carrying

I recorded this yesterday because I got nothing better to do in the holidays. I hope you enjoy this video. Bit lazy for food and potions but meh. We did duo most of the 50 on necromancer anyway so in reply to a thread closer down the page, necromancers are fine for even duoing fractals even on 50, but you may need to relog for a few encounters

no, the standard meta is up for debate anyway and isn’t always the fastest way. you can easily type requirements in the space provided anyway. plus pugging is a good source of dynamic combat