Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen discussion bandied about of a regeneration build for raids that is particularly effective at Matthias, Xera and maybe some other bosses. As I understand it, it is designed for the purpose of increasing the druid’s boon duration to the point where its regeneration will control over the regen the chrono makes. As far as the build goes, it appears there’s some confusion.

Legion of Doom guild advertises its regen druid build as magi’s with monk runes, magi’s trinkets, minstrel backpiece, and axe/warhorn + staff with sigils of transference and concentration and using the fern hound pet. qT doesn’t specifically mention it, as far as I can tell. There are some reddit posts that also mention a variant that uses exotic trinkets and platinum doubloons without the concentration sigil on the weapons.

Can some more experienced druid raiders help me sort out which is optimal here? I also have two additional questions. First, with the new magnanimous tuning crystals now available that increases boon duration, could or should that be incorporated as the standard utility consumable instead of furious tuning crystals? Second, to the extent that there is an optimal regen druid build, should that build only be used for bosses like Matthias and Xera where one would run healing spring for the heal, and if so, what bosses, and should a different build be used for others?

Thanks for the help!

The real question is whether this new condi rev build will beat the damage of the condi ps warrior in an actual raid situation. To get the highest damage you apparently have to not take Glint, so the rev’s buffing capabilities can’t be leaned on here, as it’s a purely selfish dps build. It would be interesting to hear actual raid results, but it still suffers by relying on torment. A lot of the bosses don’t move at all or are moved very little, so I worry that you wouldn’t really be able to take full advantage. Making VG move more to help the condi rev, for example hurts the other other classes. And if the boss does move, he’s not standing in your fire fields.

If someone playing this build in a raid can’t reliably beat the condi ps, I’m afraid you won’t see it much.

Why is everyone that disagrees with you a boy, kid, moron, “spreadsheet warrior,” a bad player in general who can’t stay alive, bad at revenant or a fool who doesn’t know how to put together a build?

I don’t have a stake in this fight, because the rev is not my main class, but I do have a few observations. I always encourage anyone to play whatever class they enjoy in whatever content they enjoy. I think, however, in your exaggerated condescension of people, you have glossed over some legitimate issues that are facing this class, at least when it comes to raids.

I have no reason to doubt your claim that you have no issues playing revenant in raids, but that is a real obstacle for some people, at least from my observations in NA. You’ve said, as I recall that you play with guilds and your group pugs a few slots, if I remember correctly. Many people are not in that situation, because they are not in a guild that does raids. So people like that can either buy a commander tag and start their own group, or, most likely, they’re forced to pug.

Aside from the hands kiter Ventari rev in the Deimos fight, pug commanders and raid squads don’t like revs of any kind, much less condi revs. Now we can go back and forth all day long about why that’s the case, that if that’s true those people are just spreadsheet sheep dummies that can’t play without qT telling them what to do and whatever, but it is the case. A group asks for dps, someone joins on a rev, they’re asked to switch, if they say “No, I’m playing rev, rev is fine,” then they’re kicked. They might find a training run that doesn’t care, but for people who are interested in kills, it’s a tough go for them.

So someone that wants to raid, has multiple toons geared and has options has a choice. One option is they continually join groups on a rev, have to get kicked multiple times, argue with people about it, get kicked some more and wait for maybe 2 or more hours, find a group, the group fails and people blame the rev for the group’s low dps, then either kick him or people leave, then all that time is wasted. Or he can switch to another class, find a group right away and get going. You say you haven’t run into that problem, but I’ve definitely seen it and so have many others. Not everyone has a guild group that don’t care what class people run, and not everyone has a spare 300 gold to buy a commander tag without wiping out their savings. Even if a rev started his own group without a tag, those are real issues he has to face.

I actually enjoy seeing revs in fractals, would never say it’s a bad class overall (though it does have some issues that need addressing), and have been in groups that have cleared raid wings with revs. But people’s attitude about revs is not irrelevant, as you say, because perception in many cases can be more important than truth. Any time you have to rely on pugs to get in a raid, then that particular pug groups’ attitude controls what you’re allowed to play and what you’re not. Telling someone to ignore those dead weight “spreadsheet warriors”, as you like to call them, doesn’t solve the problem, because the person is still stuck waiting for a group.

As far as condi rev goes, I would like to see someone’s actual numbers on that in raid situations, because it seems to me that with the common strategies people use, the bosses don’t move enough to take advantage of the torment. Bandit Trio and Escort have multiple adds, which would favor going Power Rev. Keep Construct would be power no question because of the burst phases involved. Although a rare strat early on, many groups now do no updraft Gorseval, so he doesn’t move there. Sabetha doesn’t move. If the group has good dps, Vale Guardian doesn’t move much at all. Slothasor moves a little, then is kept in place, and when he is moved, he isn’t moved for long. Same with Xera, she’s also moved very little. Your experience may be different than what I’ve seen, but I’m not sure how torment would be any good on any boss other than Matthias. I haven’t personally tested it, but some friends of mine have tried it and found it lackluster, and that’s not because they’re spreadsheet sheep who don’t know how to make a build.

It’s cool that your passionate about the class and want to help people with it, but some good points that you do make get lost in your bile, hyperbole, insults and sweeping statements that can apply generally, but do not universally. Not everyone who sees issues with your opinions is dumb a qT sheep or bad at the class.

Having just recently done this instance several times in an effort to find a fail proof way to get the flights of fancy achievement solo, I can tell you how I did it and can now do it reliably every time. I can also tell you that I’ve never seen any bugs when doing it solo for the first time way back when when I went through the personal story or just last week when I was going for the achievement.

1. Assuming you’re having trouble with the forced flight portions of the fight: There are such phases: (1) when you kill the first 2 blighted people; (2) when you kill the second 2 blighted people; (3) and when Mordy is at 25% health. When you reach these stages, race to the NE corner of the room near the speed boost mushroom in that area. Right next to that area a spout will spawn. I’m calling it a spout because what you see are not updrafts in the traditional sense because you can’t jump and glide into them.

2. WALK into the spout i mentioned, fall a little, then deploy your glider. Falling a little will allow you to gain enough height when you deploy your glider to land on a vine branch in the north/north east area of the arena. Land on that vine branch and you’re good to go. Do not panic, do not glide around all over the arena trying to catch another updraft/spout. If you walk into the spout, fall a little, then deploy your glider, you can land on the branch reliably every time. Even if a rock hits you up there it won’t do much damage at all to you. Rinse and repeat for the win.

3. If you want the flights of fancy achievement, which requires you not to get hit by rocks or torment orbs at all in the forced flight stages, then do what I said above, with one additional thing. On the branch if you’re facing Mordy, you can see to your left, how there’s a little dip in the branch going down. Gently get on that lower dip, and pan your camera up so the big branch is between you and Mordy. You will not get hit by anything.

4. As for the final phase, I’ve only done it on a fairly min/maxed staff tempest with food (cheap version of seaweed salad), so I was able to burn down Mordy all the way in one burn without the breakbar coming back. I’ve never seen a bugged breakbar. If you don’t have the dps, just equip your best breakbar weapon set.

Good luck and hope this helps. For the forced flight stages, I’ve never had this not work once I followed all of the above.

Here’s my best piece of advice. As weird as it sounds, the key to handling that part of the fight is to remember that what you see are not updrafts in the traditional sense, think of them more like air spouts. When you get to the flying stage of the fight, head to the northeast corner of the room near the speed boost mushroom in that area. There will be a spout right near it. When it appears, walk into it, fall a little, then hit the spacebar and deploy your glider. Falling a little before you deploy the glider will allow you to gain enough height to land on a vine branch that is in the northern area. Just stay there and don’t bother gliding around and you will be safe.

If you’re concerned about getting the flights of fancy achievement, on the branch, there’s a little dip to the left that’s like a little ledge/branch of its own as you’re facing Mordremoth. Get onto that, and pan your camera up, so the big branch is between you and Mordremoth. You won’t get hit by any of his rocks.

Just remember not to jump and try to glide…walk into the spout, that will propel you up, then hit the glider.

The back and forth on this thread is pointless because at the end of the day everything revolves around a normative question the answer to which can’t be proven true or false. The question is this: Should there be exclusive rewards based on a combination of skill and grind or not?

I think the answer to this question is yes. If the devs decided to give a unique armor skin or mini or whatever to people who win the ESL Pro League spvp tournament and those happen to be the coolest looking items in the game, I wouldn’t care. I would accept that those are rewards I would never get, move on and it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. Same thing if they locked exclusive armor skins to people who could complete a wing of Forsaken Thicket in under 40 minutes or something like that.

I understand people are paying customers, but skill based rewards in games have been around forever and there is no reason to eliminate them. I also don’t buy the utilitarian argument of the greatest good for the greatest number because the greatest number can be wrong and unreasonable.

I find the idea that raids poisoned the game ridiculous. Most of the entire game is trivially easy, and I think it’s a good thing that the developers added challenging content to the game that not everyone has the time, skill or patience to complete. And for those that can, I think it entirely appropriate that they get exclusive rewards that no one else will get. The fact that the community appears to be divided over raids just shows there is no limit to how whiny people can be in this game. 99% of the game is for the casuals. Let the 1% have their raids and the exclusive raid rewards that go with it.

The fact that there are 13 pages of comments to what amount to basically a couple of armor skins boggles my mind. In any case there is nowhere this discussion can go, which is why they need to close this thread. Either you agree with me that there is nothing inherently wrong with skins locked behind raids or other skill-based methods, or you agree with Ohoni that it is unacceptable for anyone not to be able to get every skin they want and that everyone should get envoy armor by grinding something easy. I find his position to be completely untenable for several reasons that he will never agree with, and I’m sure he finds my position untenable for reasons that I will never agree with. There’s nothing either camp can say to change the others’ mind, and everything’s been hashed to the nth degree.

I, for one, support skill based challenges and exclusive rewards, but either way, I don’t envy Anet. They have to deal with one of the whiniest player bases I have ever seen. People should stop responding to these threads so this insanity stops and people will hopefully quit with these unprovable and unsupportable positions

Structured PVP and World vs World is obviously a different story, but if we’re talking about group content PVE, like dungeons/fractals/raids, I’ve found the elementalist rotation to be very simple for both dagger/warhorn and staff. I can’t imagine a class having it any simpler honestly. The tricky part is doing all your boss damage while staying alive in berzerker gear, but for all practical purposes in group content you hardly ever use earth or water. Again, pvp is a different story but I don’t understand what people mean when they say ele is complicated in PVE, at least in group PVE.

Since I’ve seen threads lately on people saying it’s impossible for newer players to get into raids, I’d thought I’d share my story and provide a checklist for what newer players or players new to raids should do to maximize their chances of getting a raid kill.

I bought the game when it first came out, then set it aside basically until about a month and a half ago because I raided in Star Wars the Old Republic. Once I quit that game, I wnt fullspeed into GW2, and got my elementalist from 40 to 80, started learning dungeons, got him full exotics and weapons with the right runes and sigils, got my ascended trinkets and built my ascended staff.

I wanted to get into raids. The guild that I rep has wonderful knowledgeable people, some of whom have killed the bosses in the various wings, but doesn’t have a static raid group and isn’t raid focused, and I wanted to try the raids. So I kept LFG open for a while, and I found one that didn’t specifically list kill experience required. I had read guides and videos ahead of time and checked leading raid guilds’ websites to learn the loadouts elementalists use on Vale Guardian. I watched Fennec’s video on the dagger/warhorn rotation to learn it the best I could get. I did all this before stepping into an LFG raid.

Before I joined that raid’s squad, I whispered the person advertising the raid and let him know that I knew the strat, was properly geared, but had never actually been in there before. I asked for the opportunity, but said it would be no hard feelings if they didn’t want to take me. They took me, I joined their teamspeak, I said thank you, I learned, I died too much, but I learned a lot and seeing it that first time helped a great deal. I repeated this process a few times that day and the next. I watched some more VG videos from an elementalist perspective. On all my attempts I was stocked with the best in slot food for my class.

On day 3, I felt confident enough to post in the LFG “LFR VG exp tempest.” I felt that after 30 or so pulls, I could post that i was experienced, because I knew the fight, knew what was required for my role, even though I hadn’t actually killed it. There was a separate squad that was looking for a tempest for VG but wanted 10 LI, and I purposefully did not join that squad because I didn’t have what they required and I didn’t want to try to be someone I wasn’t. It turned out that that squad saw my entry in LFG and invited me. I joined, but said immediately, “Just so you know, I didn’t join you in the first place because I don’t have the kill and want to be honest here. I’m properly geared with proper food, know the fights, know my role, but I don’t have the kill. No hard feelings if you want to kick me.” Then the group was looking for a voice chat. And a conversation ensued. They asked me if I was running dagger/warhorn meta build. I said yes. They asked me if I had at least exotic gear and ascended trinkets. Yes on both counts. So I offered to host the group in my guild’s teamspeak if they would take me, but said no hard feelings either way. So the commander said ok fine, your job is damage and don’t die, so let’s give it a go.

The group was obviously experienced. We wiped a few times at first, and fortunately the mistakes were unrelated to my role, and the leader noted the dps was fine, so no one dwelled on the fact I hadn’t killed it yet. Between pulls while people were discussing, I asked if anyone noticed anything I could do differently, and asked a few questions about parts of the phases. After a player or two switched classes, and about 6 pulls total on that run, I got my first VG kill. I was so excited that I forgot to friend everyone before they quit the squad and left teamspeak Was I helped by an experienced group? Absolutely. Did I make mistakes? Sure. Did I get lucky? Somewhat, but I did things to make luck possible, and that leads me to the checklist for people who want an experience like mine.

TL;DR

1. Prepare in advance as much as you can by helping yourself as much as you can. There a lot of resources out there. Learn what gear, weapons, runes, sigils, builds and food are best in slot for your class and role for the specific boss you want to kill and get them. No excuses. Have at least exotic gear and weapons and ascended trinkets. No excuses. Have the right food and enough of it to last a couple of hours. No excuses. Watch the videos and know the strategies ahead of time. No excuses. I used qT and LoD’s websites and DeKeyz’s videos to learn the builds and other videos to watch the fights.

2. Attitude. There are always jerks everywhere, but as a whole this community is awesome compared to other MMOs. Clarify with your group what they want you to do and do it. If the raid leader tells you to do something, do it no questions asked. It’s his/her raid and you’re a guest. If you want to ask about why, save it for after the raid. This leads to a related point which deserves its own number.

3. Raids are about the team, not about you. You don’t get to play how you want, you must play in a manner that’s best for the group to get that specific kill. It’s not elitist for people to expect you to run a certain build, equip certain weapons or to slot specific skills. It can obviously be very helpful to understand why a certain loadout is the best, but the time to get into those issues is not during the raid. Talk to people after the raid or PM them later. Or better yet, look in the Players Helping Players subforum, look for the sticky, ask to join the guild called “Noob” as a student. Then reach out to the class specific mentors (who at least for elementalist are awesome), ask them about tips for your class before you even get in a raid, and ask them why a certain build is used. The raids have been out for a long time and people have spend countless hours testing everything out. That time and effort must be respected if you’re new to raids. Just run the meta builds until you’re experienced enough to know when to tweak them. It’s not elitist for people to expect you to run them. No one should be required to discuss this with you or argue with you about it during a raid.

4. Have voice chat programs and use them and get a headset and a mic. You at least need to be able to listen. I get that people are shy and don’t want to talk, but it would be best if you could actually talk because typing during a raid is a pain and takes too long. In my case, having a teamspeak that others could use was likely a factor in my group taking me in the first place.

5. Don’t misrepresent what you have done and what you haven’t.

Hope all this helps. Yes, you will have to work, spend a lot of time in LFG if you can’t find a dedicated raid training guild, and make a dedicated effort. It all depends on how bad you want it. But with a right approach and the right attitude, it’s all within reach. If you have the right approach and the right attitude, I think you’ll find the raiding community as a whole to be accepting of you. It just happened for me, it can happen for you.

After a very long break from the game, I’ve returned, and have my elementalist in full exotic gear with ascended amulet and the 6-piece scholar runes, and running the staff build with a sigil of force and sigil of accuracy. I’ve been running dungeons fairly successfully and want now to get into fractals. I’ve tried to help myself as much as possible by looking at guides, watching videos, reading old forum posts, but I wanted to ask the ele community a couple of questions about what people expect of an ele in these scenarios.

1. Might stacking. Is this even a thing anymore? I’ve looked at posts and guides where by starting in fire with scepter/focus and switching weapons, an ele can single-handedly get 25 stacks. I haven’t tried it yet and it seems to require perfect execution to get it right. But those posts and videos were before the tempest spec was introduced. And it seems like in most dungeons I’ve done, people just leeroy jenkins pull everything as fast possible and don’t even wait for something like that. Based on my limited knowledge, I can’t stack much might in staff alone without screwing up the rotation or slotting skills I wouldn’t use during the pull. Can you guys set me straight on what I should do to pull my weight on that score and what’s expected of me?

2. Staff or dagger/warhorn? Right now only my staff is exotic and I made the investment to put a sigil of force on it, so that’s what I run right now. I will be working on getting an exotic dagger and warhorn next. As far as what I like, I don’t know because when I came back to the game, I leveled all the way from level 39 to 80 and have done the first 2 HoT maps with playing staff exclusively. I have never tried dagger/warhorn, but know I’m expected to know it. Is it better in group play to use dagger/warhorn or staff. Does it differ depending on the dungeon or fractal, and if so which ones?

3. Skills. So far, I have always run Wash the Pain Away for the heal, slotted Conjure Frost Bow, Glyph of Storms, Signet of Fire and Rebound for the elite. I don’t have the experience to know when it might be best to slot something else depending on group composition, as I don’t know very much about the other classes yet, as the ele is my only character. I also don’t know the different encounters well enough to know when I should slot something else out. From what I’ve looked at, almost every guide I’ve seen has listed those, and so have used those. Can you offer any suggestions about when I should choose different skills for the slots?

Any and all suggestions/advice would be welcome. I appreciate it

I know this has been covered before, but given the state of the game I’m torn on which ascended amulet to get. I know I want Berserker for my ele, but I’m concerned about the infusion slot. I understand that the amulet is the only piece of ascended equipment that can use a utility infusion slot. And I also understand that the versatile simple infusions work on any slot, whether offensive, defensive or utility. But since I only have 58 laurels and just hit 80, I don’t want to make the wrong choice off the bat.

In some threads I’ve seen, people have advised getting the one with the utility slot because I can get an infusion with increased gold, karma, xp or magic find, which I assume would help a great deal in farming for mastery points/xp, trying to get better gear and gold, and shooting for legendary eventually.

The other issue that people have discussed in another thread is the problem with agony resistance. The only real cost effective way to get to max AR is apparently to get the +7 versatile simple infusion in all the possible slots it would go in. Before they changed the maximum fractal level, people that were min-maxing had the +5 power, +5 AR infusions, and with the patch they did not include an infusion with +7 power +7 AR, which has led to an issue about what to do and questions if one will be added down the line.

For me, I haven’t set foot in a fractal yet, so maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. My real issue is this: I can only afford one ascended piece with laurels and it appears the smart play is to go for the amulet. I also have enough karma to buy any of the utility infusions and equip it right away. So my questions boil down to these:

1. Should I get the one with the utility slot and actually equip it with a utility infusion to help with karma/gold/exp/magic find, even though that won’t help with agony resist? If so, which of the 4 utility infusions is the best option?

2. Or should I forget about the utility infusions altogether, go with the offensive slot, while realizing I can still put any versatile infusion in that slot, and banking that they will add +7 power +7 AR infusions to the game.?

I’m interested in min-maxing my character ankitten ot sure what gear level people expect with respect to the power and agony resistance. It looks like maximum agony resistance sacrifices quite a bit of power, but is necessary for the very top tier fractals. In the short term, though I’m curious about whether the utility infusions would be a great help.

Sorry for the longwindedness, as I’m all over the board on the best option for this piece.

I would like to join as a student please if this is still going. North America (Blackgate server). I’m in the central time zone in the United States. Just hit level 80 with an elementalist and bought the expansion and could really use training to get off on the right foot. Willing to learn and work at it.

I just dinged 80 on my first toon last night and bought HoT immediately, but have done nothing yet because I wanted to ask the community what’s the best thing for me to do. I’ve completed about 60% world completion, and have 85 hero points toward my Tempest elite spec for my elementalist already.

My initial instinct is to get the HoT story done as quick as possible to unlock the masteries, but here’s the issue. I started playing the game a month after launch for a short while, but took a break until a few weeks ago. I have not completed my basic personal story yet, and am on about the tail end of chapter 7. My character has only about 28 gold, and no exotics. I wasn’t sure if the personal story for HoT would be too tough without getting some better gear or finishing the personal story. But on the flip side, I was worried that if i didn’t get on the mastery track right away, none of the stuff I did would count toward a mastery and would be wasted.

I’d welcome any advice on the following issues.

1. Should I do the HoT personal story right away or get my personal story done first?
2. What’s the fastest way to get exotics taking into account I have only 28 gold?
3. Is there a preferred sequence for masteries, assuming I’d like to do dungeons, fractals/raids? It appears gliding is important.
4. I’ve stockpiled a bunch of materials from salvaging drops i got in the open world/dungeons. Should I concern myself with crafting and save them, or forget crafting and sell them to get gold faster for better gear faster, which will allow me to work on the higher level zones for better gold? I’d like to go for legendary at some point, but it’s not my number 1 priority right now, considering I don’t have good enough gear to do much yet.

Any help from the community would be greatly appreciated. I know it’s a lot of questions, but I’m trying to get off on the right foot, and things are a bit confusing after the long lay off. Thank you!