Showing Posts For Rouncer.7569:
The system is working as intented I’m not sure what people expect from a encounter that is geared for high end. It auto-levels you to 80 so that elimates the whole concept of only you can group in FotM at this lvl or that lvl. People complaining they are not getting loot but people skip mobs whenever they can. Be happy there is new content at all you paid for the base game with no subscription everything else being done is really an added bonus to enhance our playing pleasure with more to come as it did in GW1.
The levels we are talking about aren’t player levels, they are fractal levels.
The big joke though is that the increase in difficulty between level 2 and level 6 is barely noticeable. It’s just further artificial segregation of an already segregated player base.
I mean the only way you are going to progress through this Dungeon is by having the exact same people on at the exact same time, with no room for deviation…at which point you might as well be raiding.
What a poorly conceived concept, really.
What’s funny is that the system is actually much worse then raiding. In raiding you would keep a bench, would have people swapping around for various fights to maximize either their potential gain or your group’s performance. There was no problem taking a night off when raiding because of that bench and the spread out nature of gear based progression.
Can’t have a bench or any sort of variation in group composition under the current system unless the group wants to continually have to rerun previous content just to keep catching people up.
It’s just a really bad system the way they implemented it.
Someone posted a really good compromise suggestion that seems like it would be relatively easy to implement in one of the SA threads.
One solution for fractals would be to allow anyone to do the same level as the highest person in the group but make it so lower level people don’t get the same drops. So a level 1 can run a level 15 fractal if he wants and will rank up to rank 2 if he completes it successfully but will still get rank 1 rewards and have to deal with the higher difficulty.
start puging its not gonna change, also they are so called friends and guildmates.. they should be helping you with lvl 2 +. thats what guilds are for
There is a big difference between asking for help and asking for guildmates/friends to carry me through hours and hours of content just so I could be at the point where I could help them to progress.
It’s like they took the worst aspect of WoW and decided not only to import it into this game but actually went out of their way to make it worse. I don’t care about the ascended gear being better, what I care about is that the system they have implemented is actively locking off content to the point where I have to run the treadmill just to keep up with the people I want to play with. At least in WoW there was a long span of time before your gear was so weak as to be ineffective in the current content and even then people/friends could carry your through their content if they wanted to. Fractals haven’t even been out a week and I already feel like I would have to work way too hard to catch up that it isn’t even worth it.
I have a problem with the Fractals. My problem is how their design limits people by locking progression to the lowest common level attained.
There is a group of 3-4 people in my guild that are very good at dungeons and that loves to run them all the time. That is their core group and then there are another 3-4 people who tend to fill in the gaps. I happen to be one of the gap fillers and it’s worked out very well up till now. My character is fully decked out in exotics between crafting, zone completions and the dungeon runs I’ve been on with them. I’ve also raided in other games for many many years. So even if I’ve never seen an encounter, I can usually perform well enough with just a quick explanation.
I go with them when they have space and everyone’s has been happy. That’s all been fine up till the Fractals. Now they are level 8-9 and I’m still at level 2. So either I have to PuG Fractal levels to catch up or they have to carry me through content to get me up to their level. I’m not sure what you guys would be willing to do to fix it but as it stands Fractals are something that I would love to do more of but the system in place is preventing that. Being stuck between shafting my friends by forcing them to carry me to their level or shafting myself by standing in Lion’s Arch looking for a group still doing them at my level, to say nothing of the joys involved with pugging anything, makes the whole thing very unappealing.
I put Ruby Orbs in everything. They fit my particular playstyle nicely. I use GS + Sword/Pistol and focus on keeping up heavy damage-dealing phantasms. From what I understand, special bonuses such as the Sigil of Force (5% damage) or Rune of the Scholar (10% when health is above 90%) , DO NOT get applied to phantasms. This is a deal breaker for me! Don’t forget orbs are hella cheap.
But honestly, I’ve not done any testing myself. I really need to go into the mists and do some number crunching, at least before I decide to go full Exquisite Ruby Jewels in my upgrade slots.
Exquisite Ruby Jewels won’t fit in armor upgrade slots, only jewelry and back slot items. Did a dungeon run with a guildie who thought they would. Seemed like a great idea so I made one and ended up having to buy the mats for 4 more to make an exotic amulet instead when it wouldn’t fit into any of my armor pieces.
Why would you want to run 5x Runes of the Thief and 1x Crest of Rabid instead of just running 6 Coral Orbs?
179 precision + 77 condition + 14 toughness vs 120 precision + 84 condition + 84 power
As for Runes of the Scholar, if you have the gold, that 6pc bonus is very nice but if gold is an issue then think about running 6x Ruby Orbs instead.
120 power + 12% crit damage + 84 precision vs 165 power + 8% crit damage + 10% damage when health is above 90%
OP, if you are running a carrion themed build, power/vitality/condition, then you might as well continue that trend and just load chrysocola orbs into your upgrade slots. Either that or maybe go with the undead runes as they are normally pretty cheap and they are loaded down with condition damage.
Servers are getting more organized so I can seriously see a point where server A is up by an amount and organizes it such that they don’t login to wvw so the multiplier kicks in and the opposing teams can’t score enough to win.
I’d love to see modeling for the bonus points for capturing held objectives without modification of points gained for population disparities.
What if the modeling was set so the bonus for capturing a held objectives was 90% of the points rewarded for having held that objective?
Yojack: “In my original build I had muskateer at the time (now crack shot) back in beta. With volley being our highest single target dps move with rifle it is a shame it is bugged right. That being said….rifle is NOT aoe. Seriously might as well move some traits and go longbow tbh. The only time piercing would be decent is if you are trying to kite a ranger ( ? lol) and you are able to hit him and his pet simultaneously. For all other occasions I want high single target burst (volley) and 90% of the time it will be just that….single target.”
Sure, I can buy that argument for sPvP but it falls a bit flat in general world, dungeon, and WvW play. Even for something as simple as killing a turret along with a mob cracked shot has a lot of value.
Actually even for sPvP the trait has a lot of value but you have to look a bit outside the box to see it. Most of rifle’s shots have a long windup, telegraphing your intent to the other players. Body blocking works in this game. Hitting a mesmer clone or a hunter pet that gets in your way is much more of an issue without the trait.
Even outside of those two professions the trait can have value. You’re working down an enemy at a node and have just gotten him downed when one of his allies shows up and starts to revive. If that enemy player is smart he will position himself between the downed player and you forcing your rifle shots to hit just him. Then the downed player’s 4 skill will be uninterrupted, the downed player’s 2 skill can still be used against you, the blocking player’s revive isn’t interrupted by damage anyway, and you are likely about to get shafted with a 2 on 1. With cracked shot you can just keep firing through that blocking player, taking the downed player to zero and on the good side of a 1v1. Even if that other player comes after you instead of reviving you can keep the downed player targeted and position yourself so the other player is between you and the downed player and just keep working on taking that downed player to zero while damaging his ally at the same time.
I use the trait that way a lot in PvE by targeting the ranged mobs while keeping the melee ones in between me and them. Real fun to smack the untargeted melee pack with a rifle butt, barely interrupting the damage you are applying to the ranged mob. Really love the trait for things like that.
Not saying that will be a common situation or that cracked shots is straight up better then blademaster. Just saying that one trait gives you damage while the other gives you potentially very powerful utility. Personally, I lean towards the utility when compared to the modest dps increase involved.
(edited by Rouncer.7569)
It’s because you can use warhorn’s swiftness while the swiftness from the signet is active and they stack in duration allowing you to keep swiftness up indefinitely provided you use the signet and that warhorn ability frequently.
As far as I know that shouldn’t change the math significantly. Going from a 50 to 60% crit rate is more of a relative dps increase then going from 90 to 100% and that should be regardless of procs associated with those crits.
I’m not saying that going from 88% to 98% has no value, just that the trait isn’t as strong as it would be if starting at a lower crit rate. If we start from an assumption that the traits are roughly equal in value (yes, it’s one hell of an assumption) then the decreased value obtained points to Crack Shot being the better option.
I also think that Yojack isn’t giving enough value to the utility of being able to shoot through people because it’s a cool thing to get that close to a 100% crit rate. It’s also why I think he took accuracy for the sigil on the horn instead of force. Even though force is very likely the stronger option as bleeds can’t crit and he has no crit damage increases in the build so crits are only at 150%.
(edited by Rouncer.7569)
“Last I checked, crack shot was still bugged and not lowering gun skill cds by 20% =( Otherwise it is an excellent substitute but man i like having 98% crit”
It’s also great when synced with crit based sigils, like Might, Lifesteal, or Condition Removal.
Just keep in mind that all those crit based sigils have a 2 second cooldown, one that is shared with all other sigil cooldowns. So there really won’t be much of a difference in the proc rate at 88% crit vs 98% crit. Besides crit is one of those things that loses value the more of it you have in terms of straight dps increases. While the utility of being able to target a mob far away and hit it along with targets that are between you and it, isn’t something that should be so quickly discounted.
So strange. Just checked and you are partially right. Cracked Shot is definitely bugged (didn’t know that till you said it) but not entirely. The cooldown reduction appears to affect everything as expected except for Volley. Volley’s cooldown remains 10 seconds with the trait or without it.
Still a 20% reduction in aimed shot, brutal shot, rifle butt and the AE utility of piercing shots seems like a much better trait then the tiny bit of additional dps attained by going from an 88% crit rate to a 98% one.
I really like the build and plan on giving it a shot when I get home from work tonight. One thing though, I’m very surprised that you are taking Blademaster over Crack Shot. When your crit rate is already naturally so high it’s hard to see much value in 10% more crit for your sword especially when compared to the AE utility of piercing shots as well as getting to use volley 20% more often.
Dungeons, especially the explorables, are having some severe growing issues. Part of that is the general difficulty of the content but I think the bigger problem is that the players are having trouble getting a handle on the developer expectations for group compositions. Which is fine, breaking the trinity being a noble goal, but the costs involved in this learning experience are just too high. I think that if the system continues unchanged you will end up losing a lot of people.
How can this be resolved? How can you keep the dungeons challenging, while breaking the trinity, and without people abandoning that content in droves. One way is to ramp up the rewards but that is like putting a band aid on gangrene. People will then force themselves through the content for those rewards while hating what they are doing. They will waypoint zerg. They will continue to throw themselves at the content in the hopes that they will just manage to get through it. They will learn how to exploit their way through the content but they won’t learn how to manage it.
That is what I think needs to change and I think there are already systems in place inside the game to make that happen. The key seems to me to be to make it easier for players to experiment with the various builds in the dungeon environment. Give them the opportunity to try different things to overcome the various encounters and make them more familiar with the strengths and weaknesses and synergies of the various specs inside their chosen profession.
What I propose would be to incorporate part of the sPvP system into the dungeon design. Have the stats on all a player’s gear and weapons as well as all their trinkets disappear when they zone into a dungeon. Put a vender next to the anvil that offers dungeon amulets of all the same types as is available in the heart of the mists at no charge. Add an additional function to the anvil as well so that it can reset a players traits at the normal fee. This way it becomes easier for players to swap things around, to experiment with different things, to figure out what they need to work better with the other people in their group to beat the various encounters.
Fleshing out the system a bit more. Could put explorer and traveler’s stat type dungeon amulets on that vender for token costs as those aren’t going to be useful while learning the content but could then be brought into the picture when the content is known as an additional reward (as well as making the content a bit harder by using them). I would also leave weapon damage, base armor values, runes and sigils unaffected by zoning into the dungeon as earning the basic tools for the content should still play a role. Also keeps the system simpler for faster swaps between pulls as people have enough to consider with just changing their traits and stat distributions.
edit – Part of the system is already in place as we can swap around the major traits when out of combat but it doesn’t help when you are running a warrior in all knight’s gear with say a middle of the road spec (say a 10/30/20/0/10) and find yourself in a group without enough group healing to get through the content. Changing to a shout spec or a banner spec with the regen maybe with cleric stat gear could make the difference between a slog and having a good time but that would require not only a multi-waypoint trip to reset your traits but would also require you to also have a full set of equal gear with cleric stats ready to go as well.
Give people an opportunity to more easily play within your system and they will learn to play better within their groups, they will have more fun doing the content and they will keep playing through that content no matter the rewards.
(edited by Rouncer.7569)
Quick suggestion. Let the anvil inside of dungeons also offer the option to reset your traits at the standard fee. Saves groups the time of realizing they need more control or more support from then having someone hit the mists, portal to LE, run to a trainer, and then waypoint back to the zone. Also would make it easier for groups to try different setups and synergies to see what works best for them.
Offer an option to have a notification pop up in chat when someone on your friend’s list logs in. Having something similar for the guild you are representing would be nice too.
The real problem here is invisible enemies. Give their algorithms time to match servers properly.
in WvW
Posted by: Rouncer.7569
If I can offer a suggestion. Why not separate the character textures from the “nameplate” in terms of what the system will cull. I don’t know much about programming but it would seem like that would be the best of both worlds. The culling system would remain with the majority of it’s benefits intact but no matter what people would be able to see those nameplates, at any visible draw distance, and know that there are players there even if they are being culled.
Thanks, well worth the “trip” to europe to finally get that done.