Guild Wars 2

If it’s true that Chaos can be swapped out, then perhaps Inspiration could take it’s place.

With Inspiration you can get Medic’s Feedback in the first tier, although there isn’t much to take there, it could be useful during progression fights during raids, and general PvE.

In the second tier you can take Warden’s Feedback if reflects are needed, otherwise Restorative Illusion could be a solid choice for personal healing and condition removal. Considering we’re shattering on cool down, it could provide quite a bit of healing during heavy damage fights; especially since the zerker meta is suppose to be going away.

The last tier has two decent choices. Mental Defense could come in handy when you successfully block with shield 4 granting two illusions, and then the Deja Vu granting a third. The other good choice would be Illusionary Inspiration if Alacrity can be shared with your party. Even if it can’t, I’m pretty sure Quickness can.

Then, you have your minor traits like Mender’s Purity, which means super condition removal with the healing well. Inspiring Distortion could come in handy, but that would mean saving the shatter. Finally there’s Healing Prism.

Healing Prism would be awesome if they would lower the internal cool down. Considering we have two classes that have excellent healing support through Ventari’s Tablet and Ranger’s Druid spec, I don’t see any reason why we can’t lower Healing Prism’s cool down to something more worthwhile.

With that all said. If Inspiration becomes a thing, and especially if Healing Prism gets a more relaxed cool down, I could see this spec gravitating more towards a Celestial stat spread. I’m not sure if Celestial will be worth it if Healing Prism remains as is, though.

Well, we don’t really know right now. Many mesmers feel as if Chronomancers will have very good support to provide to a team which might be the new Mesmer meta. We still need to test this out more to be sure though.

There’s still plenty of builds that need testing to see how we’ll fit in with the new meta. However, I personally feel we have a strong shot at being a desired class in future content.

Well, next BWE is next weekend, and I’m sure there will be plenty of mesmers trying out the spec to see which is best. We’ll have to see then.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

rainpool.7189:

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Me? Or the other people? If me, would you mind pointing out what? Cause I went into detail to all there responses. Also, sword AA getting 10% damage boost woot woot. Ib getting a 50% damage nerf. Definitely will lesson the gap between taking another ele and a revenant or maybe even make revenant better to take. I’ll probably think it over more tomorrow more.

Was addressing the scepter overwriting phantasms. It has already been covered that you would never have up to 3 phantasms up using the build, yet you still repeatedly say that it would overwrite phantasms

So let me give an example. Let’s say you run into a fight and use pistol phantasm and staff phantasm before you get into combat ( switching them out for the appropriate weapons then ). Then you pop CS, do your whole well/TW thing and shatter your phantasms. While popping both your phantasms. Then you come out of CS and pop both your 3rd phantasm and and then your wells again. Now you shatter your phantasms so they attack again. This is where you do NOT want to be auto attacking on scepter. Then when your sword phantasm is back up, you shatter your phantasms and pop it. Then when your weapon swap is off cd, you go summon another phantasm. Now you may be thinking, HAHAHHA! Two phantasms up, scepter is in the business and start to do a happy dance. Sorry to shatter your dreams ( hahaha ), but this is where you have plenty of time to autoattack. And as we have already established, when you have plenty of time to auto attack, sword wins. Not to mention sword AA is getting a 10% damage boost. Sorry scepter, but you won’t be taken for dungeons. So yeah it’s a combination between you need to not have 3 phantasms up and you need to not have too much time to auto attack. That and the 10% damage boost to sword AA is like icing on the cake.

I’m with the understanding that you keep your shatters on cooldown. And during CS you want to use all 4 shatters so their cooldown is reset and you can do it again. Unless that has been changed. With that in mind, you won’t have phantasms with all that shatters during, or shortly after, CS. The way I understand it is as follows:

1-Get three illusions up
2-Start casting Time warp
3-Before the cast on Time warp end, cast CS
4-During CS use the other 4 shatters, as well as placing your wells and using skills.
5-Once CS ends, use those skills again, along with the other 4 shatters
6-Then, keep wells, shatter skills, and illusion summoning skills on cooldown.
7-Repeat steps 1-5 when CS is off cooldown.

If this is indeed the correct rotation, then you’re not going to have phantasms up for very long. If you decide to wait to shatter after they attack, or attack after the first shatter, then that’s lost alacrity uptime, and you don’t have a lot of duration at the beginning of the fight, you only get high duration after the rotation is complete, which means that 1.5 seconds or whatever the new daze on them lasts, means 1.5 seconds lost on early boon duration.

I’m not going to say whether it’s better to wait until the phantasms attack again or not, as I’ll need to test that out for myself, but the point is, with shatters constantly kept on cooldown, scepter’s ability to generate clones might be worth it. We’ll have to see how it plays out in the end though.

Do some sPvP, then farm a bit, maybe silverwastes or black lion keys, not sure which yet.

CandyHearts.6025:

There’s absolutely no reason for Anet rush anything because of Archeage. AA has been it’s own demise since release from Alpha stage.

I played Alpha. It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time of playing MMO games. If that game went the route of GW2 with it’s item mall, I probably would still be there. However, Xlgames really did kill themselves in the western market by becoming a P2W game.

I certainly won’t look back.

I like it. I can really see myself playing this game mode for ranked/unranked. I usually stick to hot joins when I feel in the mood to PvP, but this new game seems like a lot of fun.

I would like to see a map completion reward, as well.

A few hearts wouldn’t hurt either. Maybe make some of the events that are rarely done into hearts instead of events. That way there wouldn’t be much work involved, and it will give people a reason to go there besides doing the Karka Queen once a day.

Chaotic Storm.2815:

I myself have never actually used a mesmer myself so I can’t hold up a strong argument for this but I do see your point from a PvE side. considering clones/illusions are a major part of mesmer it does seem odd they be allowed to die so easy. On the other hand I have seen quite a few mesmer who had no issues keeping illusions up. It might be a case of bad timing for when your releasing them.
Try waiting till after he does his double stomp. I always find a large gap between stomps in that time frame.

The issue is there is no phantasms that can withstand at least one of his wave attacks. All it takes it one wave and all your phantasms go down. Most of our Phantasms have a 15+ second cool down (traited). That means your phantasms are only ever going to get one hit off, and maybe another, before being completley destroyed.

Even using the ranged phantasms like Duelist are within the coverage area, resulting on one or two attacks before the phantasm gets killed.

I have timed my phantasms for after the jump, but I’ve also killed that boss enough to realize waiting till after the wave attack makes little difference because by time he does his next wave attack, the phantasms will -might- get another hit in.

Like I said, the main issue is one attack that covers the max range of the phantasms, leading to him being one shot. There is nothing you can do help them survive that attack. I believe this is the reason the Svanir Shaman’s AoE attack is immune to Mesmer’s Phantasms, because it’s impossible to keep them alive if not, and the shaman has a longer cool down on that attack than the Berserker.

All I’m asking is that single attack have the same treatment as the Svanir Shaman’s AoE attack, for the same reasons.

anyone agree or disagree?

Hello, I main a mesmer for Fractals of the Mists, and I find the class really engaging and fun. However, there is one boss inside the fractals which severely gimps us in our damage output because they destroy our phantasms so fast.

Most of the bosses inside fractals aren’t that much of an issue when it comes to keeping up my Phantasms, I even find it fun to figure out which phantasms are best for a certain fight. Sure, some of them can wipe them out pretty fast, but my phantasms can also get a few attacks in before being destroyed. Usually, my cooldowns are up in time to put more out, and they’ll usually last until the cool down is ready.

However, there is one fight inside fractals where your phantasms can only achieve one attack before they’re destroyed, and that fight is the Molten Alliance. More specifically, the Berserker’s wave attack.

Currently, it doesn’t matter which phantasm you summon. All of them get close enough to die within the first wave. I even tried using the signet of illusions (50% more HP), and they still go down in one hit because the distance covered by the wave attack is enough to reach all of them.

The wave attack’s coverage reminds me of another fractal boss, the Svanir Shaman inside the snow fractal. This guy has an attack the covers the map, but of course only 1/3 of it at a time. When fighting him, I noticed my illusions were immune to the AoE ice attack, and thought how nice it was for Anet to consider the Mesmers Phantasms that are uncontrollable when summoned.

I think it would be a good idea for the Mesmer’s illusions to have the same immunity when it comes to the Berserker’s wave attack. I feel the semi-randomness of Firestorm’s attack is fine in terms of destroying phantasms, because it doesn’t cover the entire field and you’re phantasms can stay alive for a while if they don’t get hit by them.

However, the wave attack has such large coverage, I think it’s fair to give phantasms, immunity to it’s damage, much like the Svanir Shaman’s AoE ice attack.

At the lower levels I don’t see people having a problem with it. However, at higher levels I can see people having an issue.

The main thing I see here is the build seems to have a lot of knockdown and knockback, which is nice for PvP, but it’s not so great for PvE. First, Bosses have defiant which makes control skills less effective, and second, people like to keep trash mobs close together for AoE/Cleave. People who push mobs back is the single most annoying thing someone can do in a dungeon. Mesmers will use their Focus Skill 4 to pull mobs, but only if it’s to gather them up. Other than that, you’re hammer will have little use.

Actually, let’s look at each of your three weapons individually.

Hammer: It’s really good a crowd controlling mobs, but with defiant is useless during boss fights, and the knockback skill shouldn’t be used at all. Overall, this weapons isn’t a good choice for fractals.

Sword: This is a condition based weapon, IIRC. It’s really good at mobility and sticking to enemies like glue. However, most mobs don’t run away, so the leap is really only useful for the leap finisher.

Warhorn: Only really useful for applying weakness, but keep in mind it’s duration is reduced so much that it’s not that great. Sure it can be used as a blast finisher, but even blasting it’s not worth it. You also don’t get crippled or immobilized as much to make it worth taking.

However, I do have a Warhorn in my inventory just in case I want to AOE swiftness, plus it’s useful for when you do get immobilized while flipping a switch such as in the harpy fractal or the new asura fractal.

What I generally see Warriors run fractals in, as well as my alt Warrior, is Axe/Mace – greatsword, with warhorn, shield, longbow as backup for certain areas where it might be needed. The longbow isn’t needed as much if you’re in a steady group that melees him, but for PuGging, you’ll want to have a longbow.

I’m not logged on so I can tell you the build, but I’m sure it’s floating around the Warrior forums somewhere.

Personally, I would like to get all three types in fractals, as that’s what “ascended is for.”

How about:

Champion/Boss bags = bloodstone dust (as usual)
Fractal end of map chest = Emp. Fragments
Daily chest = Dragonite Ore

Would be nice to be able to get all three during a fractal run.

Seems I’m in the opposite boat of everyone else. I have tons and tons of fragments and dust, but I have to go out of my way to get dragonite ore.

However, that said, I do have 3 ascended weapons all of which I crafted and since I’m on Blackgate, world bosses are always being killed, so it’s not like I couldn’t go out and get the dragonite ore. I would just like to see it drop in more places.

I would try bumping this post in a couple of hours to see if Anet will respond. This is a good question, even though it doesn’t pertain to me.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Why would you want Easy Mode for FotM? AR from currently available items, plus player skill is all you need.

This doesn’t even make any sense. How would these runes make it easy mode?

It’s basically what everyone runs but instead of 10% above 90% it’s static.

Furthermore, to the people who made actual rebuttal posts. People already have multiple weapons with each having a different sigil to increase their damage in a certain dungeon. Like Superior Sigil of Seeking for the 10% damage against inquest. So maybe runes wouldn’t be the best choice, but perhaps a sigil for a weapon, to bring it in line with other dungeons.

Looking at most PuGs and Dungeons, many don’t require you to use the specific dungeon sigil on your weapon, so it shouldn’t be much different in fractals.

I just think rewards from fractals should help players within fractals. The current runes won’t do that.

If they compensate people who’ve gotten past level 30, and it’s based on how many levels you’ve completed, it should only be taken up to 50.

That’s my honest opinion.

After bringing up some good points by Zaxares and Golden Truth, runes may not be the best choice, but instead a 10% damage sigil for weapons to bring it in line with dungeon sigils.

This wouldn’t make them required, as most PuGs or non-hardcore players don’t require others to have a specific dungeon sigil to maximize damage, and it would allow us to craft things using fractal rewards to help progress our character more in fractals.

Lamir.6702:

I’m curious as to what the practical purpose of that change will be since according to a dev post 50 will still be the maximum level. I guess it’s just there when they actually make higher levels of fractals above 50 available for whatever arbitrary reason and you need to grind out that AR slot to higher than +5.

My guess is so it’s easier to achieve the AR necessary to reach 40+ w/o need the need to get all the ascended items.

For instance, if you infuse two rings, and put a 10 AR infusion into it, and your +5 as well, in addition to 10 AR in your back slot, you’ll have 40 AR which is enough to do 30-39. Where as you’ll need, currently, at least 5 ascended items to get the 40 AR needed to get the lowest Agony damage from a fractal.

I think it was made this way to help players do high fractals without needing to grind 20 dailies for the two rings they need (if they’re unlucky with RNG), or need to have everything (weapons, amulet, 2 rings, 2 accessories, and a back piece) in order to achieve the lowest damage possible with 40+ fractals.

Currently, assuming you can only get +5 AR on the armor, the max AR you can get would be 85, but these new slots would allow you to go further than that. So let’s look at the trend of AR right now.

0-9 = 0 AR
10-19 = 10 AR
20-29 = 25 AR
30-39 = 40 AR
40-45 = 55 AR

As you can see, after 10-19, the trend is +15 AR needed per 10 levels. If this trend continues…

50-59 = 70 AR
60-69 = 85 AR (where we would theoretically be with armor giving 5 AR)
70-79 = 100 AR
80 = 115 AR

This is obviously a theory based on trends, but as you can see, those extra infusion slots that be slotted with infusion much higher than 5, they’ll become very important to people attempting to do 70-80 fractals.

If they stay on the trend of +15 AR per 10 levels, and the armor will only give +5AR per piece, we’re looking at aiming for +15 infusions for the three infused items to be able to go all the way to 80 when it opens up.

Once again, just a theory.

I may be wrong, but from what I’m gathering, I don’t think so.

Anet said they’re going to be changing the infused rings and backs to have another infusion slot in them.

So, instead of

stat
stat
stat
5 AR
Infusion slot

It will be:

stat
stat
stat
Infusion Slot
Infusion Slot

My guess is this change is for upcoming infusions that give more than 5 AR maximum. They did say that artificers will be able to combine two of the same to get a higher level infusion. So eventually there may be a way to get more than 5 AR from an infusion, so Anet wanted to add 2 slots instead of 1 so these upgraded infusions can be used to increase the infused items more than a static +5 would allow.

Yeah I think there should be statue in your home instance in remembrance of the person who was your mentor during the initiation of whatever order you joined.

Pretty much what you’re going to read in this thread: Stick with your Warrior and level your Guardian.

Get used to playing those classes because any other class and you have to pull more than your weight in dungeons just to prove to the Warriors and Guardians that you’re good enough to do level 1 fractals. (ok that was an exaggeration, but still)

I wonder if Anet even knows that’s how people view the end game. 2 Guardians, 2 Warriors, and a wild card (Mesmer or Thief, sometimes even another Guardian and Warrior).

Anyone who pugs a lot usually dislikes seeing anything other than those two classes, with the rare exception of Mesmers depending on which dungeon you’re running.

It’s because of survivability and group synergy. When you make a mistake on your Elementalist you’re going down. Where as on your warrior you just heal and keep going because some classes can take a hit or two and be ok, where other classes can’t. If you’re down or dead, you’re not doing the damage you should be doing and slowing the group down.

Then there is group Synergy. Warriors bring banners (power, crit, crit damage) to the whole group. When you get classes that can’t support the group by providing buffs or reflects, there’s little reason to want them in the group.

I feel like Anet didn’t think about this during the development of the game, and now there’s the stigma where you need to do Dungeons on a select few classes so you feel like you’re not gimping your team, or you get people who think those are the only worthwhile classes, and mock the ones you refuse to give in to the meta.

/end of rant.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Honestly, I think I’m going to stay with my mesmer. They are the most fun and useful of all the classes I listed.

Like I said, they will all eventually have 55 AR, I just needed advice on which one to main and get 55 AR first (since the last 10 AR from laurels/Guild Commendations seems to be longest time gated part for me),

Thanks again!

My warrior is mainly celestial white with a plash of cobalt.

She’ll eventually have Frostfang.

This is something I don’t understand.

Why did Anet intentionally make it so she only uses her ranged attack when there’s someone in range?

If you look at mobs that have, and only attack with, a bow. They don’t start meleeing you when you’re up in their face. They continue to shoot arrows or bullets at you.

Why? Because that’s how they’re programmed. If Anet wanted the Spider Queen Boss to use her ranged attack on people who are in melee range, then they would have coded her that way.

Taking that into consideration. It’s not an exploit, but a mechanic of the boss, and it’s intended.

/thread

Saulius.8430:

if you choose not what you want, but what others tell you – you are gonna have a bad time

Well, I don’t care which class I play, they all have their pros and cons.

Hello, I’ve recently got my mesmer to 80, and now I have four 80’s of which all will eventually be in the 40+ range of fractals of the mists. However, I need help deciding on which one to main and get to 40+ first. Basically, which one should I give my accessories to first once I have the laurels or guild commendations?

Currently I have:

Elementalist: Level 3X, 40 AR. I like him, but I got kicked from a group for being an elementalist. It only happened once, and the guy never posted any details about the classes he was looking for, and it kind of disheartened me from making him my main fractal runner. I know a lot of people would rather have a class that bring reflects or group buffs, so I get it, it’s just lame.

Warrior: Level 2X, 30AR. This was my first main, and I’ve grown bored of her. Warriors are fun to play when doing new content because they can take more of a beating than say my Elementalist, but you’re pigeon-holed into using banners and FGJ all the time. At least with my Elementalist there was some mix up between encounters.

Theif: Level 1X, 20AR. He’s pretty useful in fractals, at least in the Dredge, but besides that, not much else. He does do quite a bit of damage being a D/D thief, but once again I find myself bored with 11111511111. The warrior had more buttons to push than this guy.

Mesmer: Level 2, 0 AR. Of course, I could spend the 80 gold and get her to 10 AR, and rings aren’t a problem running 3 other characters through the dailies. I just got her to level 80 today, so it won’t take long to get the relics needed to outfit her in infused rings. I find the way Mesmers play as fun as my Elementalist. The only thing I don’t like about her is she’s just starting out, which means I’ll have to grind her all the way up to 30+ just to be at the same level as my Elementalist.

So, out of all the Characters I mentioned, which do you think would be best to main, in your opinion. I honestly am not wanting to main my Warrior, but if everyone thinks that’s the best option, then I shall do so. I was considering it…

I saw that, and was like, “YES!”

Then he kicked my kitten …

After I got him down, I died again, and was running back. He was taking damage and I was said, “I WILL STOMP YOU!”

I didn’t… by time I made it to him, he died before I could finish.

I decided to have some fun by doing the tower on my level 64 Mesmer. I made up to the the third part, and just kept dieing over and over. Finally, we get a large group going and I almost made it, then BAM! dead… I said screw it and used a revive orb, which allowed me to make i the rest of the way.

I was initially going to open the chest, since I had a key, but then thought, nah better save it for one of my 80’s so I could get the best rewards from it. Can’t miss a chance at dragonite ore!

Anyway, I wanted to do the instance again for the achievements, preferably the one where you don’t die. I thought, “no one is going to want to take a level 64 mesmer” So I decided to try to solo it. Just to see if I could…

I did. It was actually quite fun. I just ran around like a headless chicken spamming my phantasms and having them to the work, most of the time, only stopping to blurred frenzy every now and again.

During the part where you needed to take care of the portals, I wanted to take it slow, so I killed the mobs, then the portal. When I got to the second portal, I noticed more spawned, so I just said screw it, and killed the last two while dodging mobs. Then when the last portal went down I blinked to the exit and ran like hell.

The only hard part was during one of the phases of the last boss where I had him and two other mobs using ranged attacks. I stuck towards the side of the room to get out of the corrupted pollen effect, and just used my reflects (thank god I was doing the 10/30/0/30/0 dungeon build (although I didn’t have all the points obviously), so I have my two focus skills for reflect, and of course the trusty feedback bubble!

I have to say, at least as a memser, this dungeon is quite easy to solo. I think that if she was level 80, it would have been pretty easy, considering I was up-leveled in sub-par gear.

Oh yeah, I got the achievement where you can’t die while fighting the last boss!

So, all in all, even though I hate the 3rd floor of the tower, it was a pretty fun living story update in my opinion. I give it a 7.5 out of 10.

Lightrayne.7829:

LordByron.8369:

Calae.1738:

Fractals don’t get harder the higher level you go. Agony is a gating system. You can dodge all agony attacks except for Jade Maw. Agony is a complete waste of space and time.

you can’t evade 15 mob focusing on you….
You need tactic…

Since the damage is higher as you advance fractals are actually harder the more you advance, until you get to the point everything oneshots you.

He said agony attacks not mob attacks. Regular mobs do not have agony attacks. (see bolded text above)

Anyways, I think agony and increased statistics (increased HP, bodies, and damage) are artificial difficulty. Sure, I’d have to change strategies a little bit, but really, it feels like same thing as you’re climbing the scale levels. I was expecting there to be different mechanics at higher thresholds (i.e. harpies gaining the knockback shot starting at scale 10), but everything was felt pretty much the same after scale 10.

I noticed the same thing as well, and quite honestly, as I climbed to 20, and then 30, I didn’t notice anything different from any of the mobs, except they hit harder.

I hope there are new mechanics at 50+, once they officially open it up to do.

Agreed, I was just thinking that the other day. I would like to get my dungeon master achievement, but I’m more of a fractal runner than a dungeon runner, and I don’t really want to waste my time doing a dungeon path I’ve already done.

That, and it would be nice to see what characters you’ve already done what dungeons on. Perhaps in the LFG UI panel, there can be another tab that shows what you’ve done before (say it’s grey if you’ve not done it, green if you have), and a little checkbox showing if you’ve already ran the path for that day.

Of course, the Living Story panel would also be a great spot.

Well, I use my elites quite often as a mostly PvE player.

Warrior: Signet of Rage always, and always on cooldown, even when I’m ooc and running around the map, that’s how much I use it. I use the Banner situationally.

Elementalist: Fiery Greatsword, I use it on almost every boss, and it’s amazing for when enemies are backed against a wall. If FGS isn’t worth it, then I use the Elemental Glyph, and save it for when I need some extra healing, or just want to have some decent damage output at the start of a fight.

Theif: I use Thieves Guild at the start of most boss fights, and if I feel like killing trash mobs quicker, I use dagger storm.

I think that there are some elite skills that are more worth it, and those should be looked at, but I think they’re intended to be used situationaly.

I’m looking for a more NA time based guild. I’m currently EST and my work schedule is either 3PM to 11Pm or 11Pm to 7AM, so I’m usually up from 3PM to 7AM, and am most active during 3PM est to 7AM est

Hello, I’ve recently transferred off Crystal Desert and am looking for an active PvE focused guild. I don’t mind a PvX guild, as long as PvE is the main focus.

A little about me. I’m a semi-hardcore player. I started raiding in World of Warcraft, where I learned the ins and outs of min/maxing and coordinated play. During Wrath of the Lich King I raided 25 and 10 man Ulduar and completed the Hardmode 10 man, and continued to do so for the rest of the expansion. When Cataclysm started, I found myself bored with the game, so I tried out Rift, where I joined another raiding guild and did all the vanilla dungeons and part of Hammerknell before having to quit raiding scene all together because of work conflicts.

I enjoy the hardcore game play of MMORPGs. I’ve always tried to push myself to further develop my gaming skills, and as such I feel I’m an above average player, but not quite an amazing player. I think everyone, including me, always has room to improve their skills.

I decided to try out GW2 because there were no raid times to worry about, and I felt like I could log on and get a group going for something, and I found that to be quite accurate so far. I started on the Crystal Desert server, and have been playing there for quite some time. However, after the events of Southsun and the opening of Fractals, I took a break from the game, and about a month or so ago, came back. Honestly, I’m not sure why I took such a long break, but I’m back and don’t see myself leaving anytime soon.

Alright, now that my whole life story is out of the way, I’ll start talking about what I’ve done so far in GW2.

Right now I’m really enjoying fractals, and try to do them at least 3 times a day for each of my current 80s. So far this is what I’ve accomplished in fractals.

Elementalist: Level 2x, but can do 3×. He has the ascended staff, infused rings, amulet, and back piece. The only thing missing from him is his Accessories which I hope I can get through dailies and guild commendations.

Warrior: Level 1×. This was my main before my break from the game, but when I came back decided to start the elementalist and like him a lot. Currently my Warrior only has the non-infused rings and the amulet, but with a bit of work can easily infuse the rings, get a backpiece, and be set for 2×. I just don’t want to upgrade the equipment before hitting 19.

Thief: Currently below level 10, but has 10 AR so I usually do 1x for my daily.

All three of my 80s have Berserker gear and appropriate builds. My Elementalist is running a staff build, but that’s only until I can get ascended weapons for the AR required for higher levels. I ultimately decided on staff because I could get 10 AR for the price of 5.

I’m currently slowly leveling my Mesmer, and after her, my Guardian will be next. I feel like these two classes would bring a lot to the PvE experience. I just wish my Elementalist was more wanted, haha.

TL;DR – I’m looking for a semi-hardcore PvE focused guild. I feel that I meet the goals of such guilds, and am looking forward to farming fractals, and other PvE related content.

Side note: I have no experience in speed runs. Most of my PvE time is spend pugging fractals, but I’m very interested in learning how to speed run dungeons, so a guild that has speed running groups willing to teach newcomers to the meta would be greatly appreciated.

If you’re pugging, don’t do Lightning Hammer build. That build is only for coordinated groups. I’ve ran the build in PuGs before, and it’s terrible. On fights requiring you to range, or in fights where melee isn’t always going to happen, your damage is reduced a lot. Not to mention you have to worry about juggling the second hammer, and ask people not to pick it up every time, and if you don’t, someone will. That build is really only good if you have a group that can lay down a fire fields consistently, and you’re not the only one in melee. In theory it’s the best damage we have, but in practice it’s not.

Fire Staff Ele is the best option for general pugging, in my honest opinion. It’s a boring build to play, but it deals a lot of damage, and you still have access to more than 5 skills.

A good team orientated build is the scepter dagger build. It does amazing burst damage, and it focuses on party might stacking. Once again, it’s more useful when everyone is in melee, but in PuGs that rarely happens.

Personally, I use scepter/dagger for bloodlust stacking on trash mobs, then switch to my staff for boss fights.

However, if you decide to go with another class, which happens more often than not, there is only four classes that are usually wanted in dungeons/fractals. Warriors = Guardians > Mesmers > Thieves.

Warriors and Guardians because they have high armor and high damage, as well as abilities that work well with group play, such as banners and reflects.

Mesmers are needed for a lot of tricks for skipping mobs or making general things easier. Such as laying a portal down for someone carrying a wisp in the swamp fractal, or totally skipping the last set of harpies in the uncategorized fractal.

Thieves are wanted for almost the same reason as the mesmer. Thieves can stealth the entire group to make skipping trash mobs easier as well as bring the most single target damage to take down bosses faster. They also have AoE blindess that can be kept up almost, if not, 100% of the time for unavoidable trash mobs, such as in the ascalodian fractal.

Almost all speed clearing groups want these classes. Sometimes thieves aren’t wanted, but that depends on the people playing.

Anyway, I know you didn’t say fractals, but that’s what I have the most experience playing, so I used that as an example of some things these classes can do to help the team. The problem with elementalists is that we don’t bring much to the team in terms of group buffs, and we don’t make skipping mobs easier, the only thing we really have is damage, which we do very well, but most experienced dungeon runners would rather have classes that buffed the groups damage or have ways to make the dungeon more smooth and faster.

Taking all of that into consideration, the best build we have that group runners would want would be the might stacking scepter/dagger build for continual might stacking during a boss fight.

Does Anet plan to do anything about Fractals being character bound? What I mean is, if someone is kicked for being d/c’d too long, and they’re the ones that started the run, everyone is kicked out, losing all our progress and ending the run all together.

I think that if someone d/c from the game, and they’re the instance owner, it should be moved to another character, with a message that tells the group who’s the current leader. Or if someone is kicked or leaves, it should also just change ownership.

I’m not sure how technically possible it is (I assume it can be done, but I guess it depends on how Anet built their game), but it would be a lot less frustrating.

Looking at the price lists, I’m glad I have my two different players to buy from…

One sells for 4 gold a run, so I lose out on a little less than 1 gold
The other sells for 3 gold a run, so I actually end up gaining a few silver.

Of course this is path 2, and I usually don’t buy any more, because I just wanted my shards for bifrost, but I might continue and get a full set of skins

If you’re into staff, then this is what I would recommend.

PvE = DPS. The best DPS staff known right now comes from staying in fire and autocasting and lava fonts on cooldown. Meteor shower if there’s a decent amount of mobs or the boss is bigger than a human.

PvP = Up to you, but if you’re in organized play like WvW, you’re just a field dispenser so I would go support for this, 30 in water and 30 in Arcane, the last 10 points are up to you. Basically you lay down lava font when they call for a fire field, and either geyser or healing rain when they call for a water field. Rarely, static field for stacking swiftness. Don’t be discuraged though, dropping a meteor shower on a zerg is pretty fun ^^.

Side note: There is a conjure build out there, if that’s your thing, that competes with fire staff as the highest PvE dps. I think theoretically, the Lightning Hammer build out dps the fire staff, but in actually play (especially in pugs) fire staff is better. Of course, LH can be very rewarding in organized dungeon runs, but it’s a play style for people who like juggling conjured weapons and like the hassle of telling their PuG groups not to pick up the 2nd hammer.

I enjoy the firestaff PvE play style a lot more than the LH one. LH is really poor in PuGs, which I generally run, because fire fields aren’t being laid down as much and I with most melee classes, you’re running in and out of combat, and dodge rolling when needed, which means you can’t dps. With the fire staff build you can continue to dps while moving out of things to be avoided while only losing 10% damage, until it’s safe to go back in melee again.

LH build is only really good when you have another class to lay down fire fields, if not, then fire staff all the way. I just hope people will start to understand LH isn’t the end all be all of elementalist dps.

For instance, last night I was told to learn my class. I was kind of shocked, seeing as I was adding a lot to the group with damage and support (healing raid when someone needed it, reflect aura when I was being focused by ranged classes, setting up AoE might), and they told me LH was the way to go and all their elementalists run that build. So I had to explain to him that it wasn’t as great as he thought it was. The sad part was he didn’t even have an elementalist. He said his guildies ran that, but never mentioned himself.

He was on a Warrior, enough said, really.

I’ll go ahead and add my information for my spreadsheet. I don’t feel like uploading it, and I have information that might be confusing to anyone trying to read them, so I’m just going to type out what i have in a condensed and easier way to understand.

Keep in mind I’ve only started doing this yesterday.

All items are level 80 rares and I’m only using the black lion Salvage kit. Once I’ve reached a certain number, I’ll start another spreadsheet using master kits, to compare them.

Total tries: 68

Total # of Ectoplasms salvaged: 97

Average # of Ectoplasms per salvage: 1.426470588

current chance to get 0-3 ectoplasms per salvage
note: these percentages were rounded.

0 ectoplasms: 25%
1 ectoplasm: 29.5%
2 ectoplasms: 23.5%
3 ectoplasms: 22.0%

From my information so far it looks like each category has a 25% chance to happen, that is a 25% chance to get 0, 1, 2, or 3 ecoplasms per salvage. However, I don’t think this is accurate and once I’ve done a lot more, hopefully I’ll start to see the percentages getting closer to their actual value.

Currently, I’ve lost around 30 silver rebuying the black lion kits, from salvages 19-68. The first 25 runs I did very well, but the last 25 runs I did very poorly, which only proves I’ve yet to collect the data needed for a well rounded numbers.

Please remember that these numbers are not large enough to give a good sample size, and you should disregard them until larger sample sizes from various people have been collected. I just wanted to post my progress here on this thread. Once I feel like I’ve gotten a big enough sample size, I’ll post another topic showing everyone my results.

hmmm, I don’t think I’ve noticed that, but maybe I’m just missing it.

I have been trying to get a correct answer from the internet for a while, but have had no luck.

The gatherer bonus says, “x% chance to get additional gathering node uses.” However, I’m unsure what they mean by this. I’ve farmed ore, wood, and plants every time I can, but I don’t see any changes, and our server is currently at about 14% (or was it 15%, I’m not on atm), which confuses me more. Perhaps it’s not what I think it does.

Anyway, can someone please explain to me what this bonus actually does. I asked in chat, and someone said, “Increases the gathering success rate,” but that lead to more questions that answers.