Guild Wars 2

DBZVelena.5186:

Ugh why add new currencies when we already have currencies that work fine for this.

Yeah, I’ve thought about this and I really don’t understand the need for another currency. Why would you invalidate current skirmish reward chests and current proofs of heroics just to add another? If the goal is to prevent players from unlocking everything on day 1, then why can they do it in PvE? It’s inconsistent to make WvW-exclusive players wait arbitrarily to build up a new currency, is a waste of a new currency slot when a current one is perfectly suitable for it, and will also make skimish reward chests unstackable if there are different kinds. I just can’t see an upside to this implementation.

Makai.3429:

Sorry. I’m used to being defensive like this. Like I’ve said, I feel this game is really hostile toward players like me, so it’s natural. I’m sick and tired of being demeaned and kicked out of groups for not being able to reach some paragon level of perfection.

No hard feelings! It sounds like you just need to find the right guild to run with so that you’re not dealing with pubs, which are the literal worst. There are a lot of them in the Looking For forum that may be a good fit, so I encourage you to check them out and whisper their officers.

Makai.3429:

I don’t know why you’re implying I don’t have the right build or equipment. The reason I can’t do hard content is because of visual noise, OHKO red rings of death that I can’t see, and the general sluggishness of the controls: nothing at all to do with my knowledge of the game. (Also, fyi, it’s in poor taste to tell a disabled person what they can and can’t do. Seriously.)

I don’t know why you’re being so defensive; I never implied anything (seriously, reread it), I was simply stating the requirement of proper build/equipment for success. If you want to succeed, all you have to do is find the right group and try. That’s it.

Makai.3429:

I want to get better, but I’ve exhausted my resources, so I hope you can understand. The shift from GW1 to 2 was massive: twitch reflexes over strategy and thought, which has turned me from a leader, expert, and mentor, into a scrub – even worse when I get lambasted for missing a single tell in a sea of particle effects or when my reaction time is off by 1/16th of a second; or when this “great community” tells me to git gud despite knowing I have limitations (I’ve been playing MMOs since 1999 and have never encountered a community so hostile to disabled players as GW2 – multiply that cruelty x 100 for your one fraction of players). I’m really good at games in general, but GW2 has been problematic since HoT, and as more people move to Raids/T4, there’s fewer grouping options on the horizon.

You can beat any non-CM encounter in raids or fractals with literally any composition so long as you at least understand the basics and are willing to update your build to be reasonable for that class. Seriously.

My guild lets some of our less skilled or physically handicapped players use supertank healing builds in raids and fractals, and they get clears of T4’s and every raid encounter just like the rest of us. The only challenge here is you looking for a group who will let you do that; just find the right community and everything is accessible to anyone who’s willing to try.

It will come out with LW season 4, and will only require HoT to create, not PoF. This has been confirmed by MO.

I like this idea, and I’d make the title and achievement: “Nightmare Unleashed”

STIHL.2489:

You didn’t miss anything, the company moved anyway from fun Dungeon designs that have a story and a theme, to Fractals that feel like an RNG Grind Rusher wet dream. so that was spot on.

I like how you completely overlook the story and theme for the Fractals, lol. You people and your rose-tinted glasses.

This is really disappointing news. The blue one is the only one I want, and I was hoping to gradually make progress towards it by playing 100CM daily. Hopefully the Fractals team can do something about this.

• Melee every fractal boss successfully.
• Able to solo nearly every encounter if you’re good, with few exceptions (Swamp wisps, Underground cages, etc)
• Better liquid gold and item rewards than dungeons ever gave.
• Ascended armor / weapon rewards, as well as a system to acquire them guaranteed if you prefer that route.
• Ramp-up system teaches you how to deal with challenges at lower levels before they hit at higher levels, preventing you from getting rekt out of the gate.

About the only thing dungeons have over fractals are that dungeons reward armor skins and fractals don’t have any yet. Hopefully the Fractals team is fixing that. Outside of that, you’re definitely just missing something.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

You’re missing the fact that all benefits are cumulative. The 4 piece bonus from Nightmare does not overwrite the 2 piece bonus. It stacks with it.

The 2-piece bonus for Nightmare is 5%, the 4-piece bonus for Nightmare is 10%, and the 2-piece bonus for Trapper is 10%. That adds up to 25%, not 30%.

This dumb thing should be account bound so I can stick it in a shared inventory slot and have a (birthday) blast whenever I want. Instead, I just keep the thing in the individual inventory of literally all of my characters, wasting a slot for all of them. I think this is a great, extremely easy QOL change that ANet could do.

Blaeys.3102:

While I doubt anyone can steal your account with the information, communicating the value of your account and exactly what you own can make you a more likely target for gold sellers and others of that ilk.

You only need the characters permission on any API key you provide in this manner, which wouldn’t give anyone access to anything outside of the stuff on your characters. You can also disable the key after. That said, maddoctor.2738 is correct that it’s better to just share your specific character’s page on GW2Efficiency instead of handing over an API key to begin with.

I’m still pretty disappointed with it, truthfully. Every other week something flashier comes out on the gem store, and my silly little Ad Infinitum glider persists at the “just barely noticeable” level. I’m not asking for Ad Infinitum’s glider to be a meteor, but it doesn’t have a custom animation, it doesn’t have a very noticeable effect, it uses the default trail… It’s just really lackluster. Get the guy who did Warbringer’s glider to do a pass on Ad Infinitum and the Ascension and we’ll be talking.

It’s not against the ToS, and while very annoying for a pub, it’s perfectly legitimate for someone to run a guild that way. If you hate the idea of being honest with your guild leader about your gear/character setup, then just don’t join that guild! Simple, really.

NotOverlyCheesy.9427:

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

A lot of people in both of my guilds raid 5-6 times a week because they’re fun, but it’s nice when they don’t cost you money thanks to food costs. That said, the other guy’s wrong because the wings won’t be dead; tons of people still do all wings because the RNG loot is incredibly lucrative if you get a drop. No raider worth their salt is crafting ascended gear these days, after all.

Zenith.7301:

There’s absolutely no reason to turn down any DPS spec in fractals outside imporper gearing/traits.

Let people play the game how they want. If they want to go crazy with speedclears because they find it fun, they can do what they want and make their guild how they want. If you want to yolo with anyone that has a pulse, go for it.

Zenith.7301:

Most 100 CM’s involve a necro, don’t know what the kitten you’re talking about.

For full awareness, speed clear groups—like the guild that made the guides—use 2x Elementalists as their DPS classes in 100CM for much higher overall damage and utility than a Necromancer offers. The PUG safe-strategies typically vary wildly from the optimal speed clear strategies (See: Deimos).

TexZero.7910:

Returning to PFL would be the healthiest thing they could do to prevent a ton of the issues currently plaguing T4.

I agree with everything you’ve said thus far in this thread except this part. Character-bound PFL was horrible, and prevented even experienced players from playing alts and having some variety in their daily runs. I never want that to return.

I use consumables 100% of the time. There are plenty of awesome consumables on the TP worth mere copper that make your open world experience significantly easier. Seriously, go buy some Mintberry Ice Cream at least.

DerAlteSack.3572:

I got a friend to come on a Revenant and follow me around. This way I had perma swiftness. It makes it a bit easier, though not a lot.

If you’re playing correctly when shooting for gold, you’ll have 100% uptime of the speed boost mushrooms, which are better than swiftness (40% movement speed). This was necessary when I got gold on this adventure recently. The other necessary trick is to always avoid fall damage so that you don’t get put in combat. There are also a number of jump shortcuts you can take in certain paths to shave seconds off your total time.

Substatic.6958:

Cool class. Cool devs.

1. They made good guides which are actually really helpful, so thanks to them for that. Seems the Fractal developer agrees.
2. They run a speedclearing guild, and Necromancer’s are not optimal for speedclearing so they don’t want any. Let them run a guild how they want to.
3. These two things are completely unrelated, and so your post is grasping at straws to justify whatever point you’re trying to make.

Astralporing.1957:

You can ignore those from consideration, as they are not unique to spellbreakers and can be used by any class (and most mobs do not have any boons anyway).

They’re also realistically worse than Scholar runes both because they offer precision that you cap out on elsewhere over ferocity and because the multiplier is worse in nominal situations.

We are still recruiting even if I’m a terrible guild leader and keep forgetting to refresh this post! Everything in the OP still applies, so if any of that sounds interesting do reach out to one of the officers and let us know!

It was a 5th anniversary present, which was only present on the exact day of the anniversary. If you didn’t log on during the exact day of the anniversary, then you don’t get the gift.

It took me 35 Jade Armor events to get the Jade Core. It sucked a lot, but I think it’s intentional, and you’re going to need a lot of Blood Rubies anyway so it’s not totally in vain.

It’s possible that PoF raids will use a different currency than HoT raids, but they haven’t made a statement on it yet. Anyway, raids already offer the best chances to drop ascended gear with variant stat combinations, so guilds and static groups will continue to do them all regardless of magnetite shards.

Not enough auras.

P.S. I think using Perfected Envoy Leggings + Sublime Mistforged Triumphant Chest would be better. I also think you should use Nightfury for shoulders with the Glorious Hero’s Gloves.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

The replacement needs 16.6k to send both of these boys and their grace of the land home.

Is there a reason you’re conveniently skipping the 5-7% power damage gain from Frost Spirit, the 2-4% condition damage gain from Sun Spirit, and the 7% critical hit chance from Spotter all in addition to GotL? Is there also a reason you’ve basically ignored the relevance of condition Druid in your analysis? Most encounters don’t need 2 healer Druids in even particularly bad groups, and can at least run 1 condition Druid.

P.S. If you run enough healing gear on a Scourge for it to actually heal/apply meaningful barrier, its damage is going to be terrible in addition to forgoing all of the buffs that a Druid provides. It’s lose-lose.

I’ll preface this by saying that I’m stating all of this based on what we saw last weekend, and if things change between then and release a lot of what I say may be totally irrelevant/wrong.

Winners

• Condition DPS Renegade is going to be crazy good and will be best DPS for a lot of bosses.
• Firebrand is a real contender for team quickness uptime coupled with a DPS Chronomancer for alacrity. This is going to be close, so I’m interested in seeing how it plays with real encounters / golem testing.
• Condition Soulbeast is an improvement over base condition Ranger, but we have yet to see by how much. Power Soulbeast is hilarious with Sic’ Em’s 40% damage modifier, and may even result in a totally relevant power build for Ranger.
• Holosmith will certainly be better than Tools for power Engineer, and may even be worth taking over Tools for condition Engineer as well. Rotation and golem testing will be needed.

Neutral

• Scourge is lackluster unless they find some way in new raids to make barrier relevant. Its damage is acceptable and at least doesn’t require an ice field, but it isn’t winning any awards.
• Weaver is really complicated, and loses on a lot of the benefits of Tempest. It’s a tough call, really, and some of [qT]‘s initial rotation testing seemed promising. I’m hopeful it’ll be an improvement for staff Ele at the least, though I still think Fresh Air builds are dead in the water.

Losers

• Deadeye will be a potential improvement for D/D power Thief, but it won’t be enough to push it over Daredevil it seems. Rifle is terrible for organized PvE, and Deadeye doesn’t support condition builds at all.
• Spellbreaker is pretty bad for organized PvE.
• Mirage is pretty bad for organized PvE.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

“Irreplacable”? They’re quite replacable once you become aware that they replace druid’s own abysmal damage. You don’t get those for free, you get those at expanse of one good dps-er.

The damage from a Druid is extremely significant. For context, the half uptime you lose on GotL from taking 1 Druid instead of 2 is equivalent to either your Sigil of Force or Berserker rune’s 6 bonus. If you want to go crazy speed clearing, you can have the Druid run a condition build doing over 12k and now you truly have something that no PoF class even comes remotely close to competing with in terms of net team DPS gain. A lot of people just run a ton of healer Druids because it makes up for players mistakes and you don’t need crazy DPS to beat every encounter. The reality, though, is that not only is Druid a safe play, it’s a very strong play even when taken in its safest form. The combination of these things means that nothing in PoF as-is will even come close to competing with it.

About the only comparison worth considering between current meta and probable PoF meta is DPS Chrono/Firebrand vs. Top DPS Class/Quickness Chrono. That has the potential to be really close. Since nothing else can apply Spotter/Spirits/GotL, however, you won’t be replacing your Druids.

Rauderi.8706:

That is some entitled chaff, and in the right circumstances, might be construed as LFG abuse for kicking someone who participated in a fight but cutting them off before the reward/completion. And if Support starts getting a flood of LFG Abuse reports for this, it might very well become policy.

You say this, and yet Chris Cleary has explicitly said in the past that by joining someone’s party, you implicitly authorize them to collect and monitor your DPS. A vast majority of DPS meter users—I would argue—are using it as intended by ANet and without issue for other players. You may encounter hundreds upon hundreds of players using them daily without even realizing it. Like with all things, however, a few people may push the limits of the reasonable and act in a toxic manner, but it wouldn’t be the tool’s fault; they’d find a way to be toxic regardless of access to a DPS meter. My recommendation for those who encounter such toxicity is always the same: ignore it, block them, report them, leave party, move on.

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

I meant to tackle this sooner but I uh… forgot. >_>

We forgive you because you talk to us.

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

That is the real question. Armor sets are surprisingly expensive in terms of developer cost.

We just need to delete charr first…

I think your metrics will agree with us that enough people play Fractals regularly to make a core-available armor set available through Fractals as the ultimate prestige item in the mode (and relic sink)! This is probably the #1 thing I have hoped for as a reward in the game mode above all else. It shouldn’t be legendary so it isn’t competing against raid rewards, but just having a unique skin would be killer rewarding.

morrolan.9608:

.. its poor game design if thats the case.

You’re not wrong, but that’s why it’s done this way. There are material imbalances literally everywhere in crafting in this game, and I don’t think ANet has any plans to address them.

DPS meters are allowed, and by joining a party with someone that is considered your giving consent to the other players in the group to read your DPS and act based on it. If someone else started the group and decided that you were the weak leg in DPS, it’s entirely their prerogative to remove you if they see fit. ANet will not take action on them.

People referring to a gear-check functionality are correct in that it’s disallowed and reportable. You’re better off reporting these specific users to exploits@arena.net with as much detail as possible because that means people like the game security lead can investigate non-compliant tools.

Some references from Chris Cleary, game security lead, follow. (1)(2)

narcx.3570:

It would be more like Firebrand/Renegade vs. Chrono/Druid since a Rev would need Ventari to keep 100% Alacrity uptime, so they might as well spec heals.

If that’s the competition then Chrono/Druid has already won because a Druid offers irreplaceable offensive buffs in GotL, Spirits, and Spotter.

Medium takes fewer items because T7 leather is vastly more expensive than T7 cloth and metal.

This is a bug and they’re aware of it from an earlier thread. That said, I was hoping it’d be addressed with the last big fractal patch, but it appears that it wasn’t. Hopefully they get a chance to tackle it for the next release.

Astralporing.1957:

I wasn’t talking about challenge mote. I have no real problem with those being on a different level of difficulty (though i do dislike them having exclusive rewards).

It’s the basic level 100 that i was talking about.

Ah, the OP was talking about CM is why I was confused. They significantly nerfed the NM100 with the bug fix patch, and it’s much easier IMO than other encounters like T4 Mai Trin. None of the mechanics are one-shots, and you can go super bulky and just facetank nearly everything if you desire and basically guarantee a win. I encourage you to try it again post-patch with your favorite build; you’ll find that any comp works, it’s nothing like a raid, and the fractal is actually quite nice.

Astralporing.1957:

And i hope for the exact opposite, since it caused my interest in fractals to go way down.

If i wanted to raid, i’d be raiding.

The neat thing about challenge motes is that you don’t have to activate them.

Byron Miller.4629:

We’re made note of these inconsistencies and will be standardizing all boss damage auras alongside the next raid release.

Check the raid patch-notes for details at that time.

That’s great news! Does that also include standardizing the “Revealed” buff for all bosses? While on the one hand it’d be cool for Thieves to always get a free 200 power in raids, I actually think it’d be much better if they could properly use their stealth attacks. Because of the Revealed buff, the D/D build is totally crippled in certain encounters, and this definitely impacts the possibility of other builds in the future.

As far as blockable/unblockable auras, I tend toward thinking they should be unblockable so that Aegis carries value. As a Chronomancer, I think we should be actively trying to block real attacks to proc Deja Vu instead of getting random procs on an aura. That’s just me, though.

You’ll find these people in all online communities; GW2 isn’t special. Block them in-game, ban them from your Discord channels, and move on.

My current understanding is this:

Damaging Aura:

• VG
• Gorseval
• Sloth
• Matthias
• KC
• Cairn
• MO
• Samarog
• Deimos

No Damaging Aura:

• Sabetha
• Trio
• Escort
• Xera

Unblockable Damaging Aura:

• Sloth
• Deimos
• ???

Perma-Revealed:

• Gorseval
• ???

I figure I may be wrong on a few cases, though, so I’m sure someone else has investigated this to look into it more.

I’m trying to sort this out once and for all. I know some damage auras like Samarog’s and MO’s can be blocked, proccing Deja Vu for Chrono, but I’m really curious to know which bosses have unblockable (or no) auras at all. Additionally, I’m interested in which bosses have permanent revealed and which don’t. Thanks in advance!

Djinn.9245:

I don’t understand the people saying “I bought from them and it was fine”. You understand what “anecdotal evidence” means, right?

Bingo. Buy direct from ANet or at least from official retailers if you value your account.

Crinn.7864:

Not really. Scourge will never make a good tank because it lacks hard mitigation which means it will require significantly more healing to keep alive.

You might be right, but looking at the raw number of skills that can apply barrier on the Scourge and the base values of those barriers, it can use this mechanic to soak 20k+ damage without issue once every 14 seconds or so thanks to alacrity. I think you’d be surprised how effective a Scourge will be at keeping alive literally facetanking boss mechanics, but who knows. We’ll see!

If Firebrand takes over Quickness, you’d still bring a DPS Chronomancer for permanent Alacrity, and if you have a Chronomancer then it makes sense for it to tank due to its immense damage mitigation. That said, depending on what kind of DPS a condition Scourge is able to deal, it’s entirely possible it could use its excessive barrier mechanic to serve as an ideal tank as well.

I would be shocked if there were not an Escort-like event in raids that utilized mounts in some fashion.

Based on today’s announcement that utility consumables are being completely changed, it feels really bad if you’ve been using things that are totally changing in usage with the upcoming patch. I’ve made a bunch of Magnanimous Sharpening Stones and Magnanimous Focusing Crystals for different content, and now I’m stuck with these things that have no value in the context I created them for? They’re now giving power/condition damage instead of the defensive stats that I wanted.

I fully support a boon/condition nerf from a food perspective, and think it makes a lot of sense. What I don’t like is sinking hundreds of gold into account bound consumables only to have them not even do what you made them to do.

Some possible solutions (only one is necessary):

• Provide a way on patch to convert utilities 1-to-1 into eachother so that players can pick whichever one they need and don’t lose the value of their old consumables
• Remove the account bound modifier and let players sell them on the TP to recoup costs to then buy what they want to make
• Don’t totally change the purpose of utility consumables as proposed and keep them closer to what they currently do just with nerfed numbers

The complaints about L25 are very strange to me. My friends and I went in with a random comp including 3 very low DPS non-meta builds and one-shot every boss, screaming in pure joy on Discord at the fun mechanics of each as we figured it out. We then spent another 20m scouring for lore and having fun there as well.

I think it’s a great fractal, though I do agree that the “3 boss linear design” needs to stop being a thing. I’d prefer things with more variety overall, a single boss at the end with some random weird-but-fun events along the way. I also generally agree with the criticism that the new fractals take too long; even with optimal groups it’s a huge time sink.

That all said, I strongly disagree with comparisons of the bosses here and raid bosses. They’re very different, and I don’t think it’s fair to say “it’s basically a raid boss” just because it has mechanics. All bosses should have mechanics to make the encounter interesting and unique.