Guild Wars 2

I know this isn’t necessarily a question regarding the intent of balancing the skills, but it still has implications on the state of the metagame so I think this is an appropriate place for it.

With the changes to Vault now being affected by Quickness, changes to the skill were made for it to function properly. However, in its current state, it is clunky, can only hit up to half of max range, and, most importantly, has a very noticeable aftercast delay when affected by Quickness. Is this intended? As it stands, Vault is better than pre-patch, but it still falls behind Weakening Charge in terms of optimal DPS rotations for Daredevil.

Deathtrix.5921:

My team has spent countless hours bashing our heads against demi because of this. We have most of our good attempts in the first hour, and then the next 4 hours is us getting more and more burnt out, cycling through replacements who come and go, and ultimately hitting a wall at around 10-40%

Although it could be argued “working as intended”

One thing that is not working as intended though is tanking as a whole. I struggle to move Demios, and often he gets stuck inside phantasms and the NPC. It’s a nightmare for my alacrity uptime to have to shatter all my avengers just to get the boss to move 300 units…

The issue is the area in which you tank him. Certain parts of the platform bug him out. Try the opposite side.

Reminder that this is still a big issue: waiting for a fix.

Edit: link to a table of all the affected skills

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/50qm21/major_autoattack_bug_huge_aftercast_if_you_mash_1/d76abmo/

cranos.5913:

Guard basically has sword 2 and F1 spam, if you take radiance your F1 will be off cd every time you kill smth. Tempest still has the most powerful blind, sandstorm. Thief pistol 5 and smoke screen. Engi bomb and grenade. If rly necessary druid could use a smokescale for another blind field I guess, or necro the well of darkness. (tho I’ve never been in a situation where non-meta utility picks were rly necessary to stay up)

All good advice, except one correction: despite Smokescale being a smoke field, it does not do any blinds by itself, it just gives evasion to the Smokescale.

RNG is RNG is RNG is RNG

It’s random, you were unlucky.

Can’t remember the name right now, but you also have a trait that deals more damage to foes above 50% health. I think it’s in Critical Strikes.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

It’s because this game simply doesn’t have the interface to give me the control I need to do it. Taking my finger off the WASD in order to activate and deactivate abilities is all it takes in terms of delay and loss of control to cause me to fall out of this puzzle.

If you need to take your fingers off WASD to activate your number 1, 2, and 3, skills, something must be seriously wrong with your keybinds. Also, it sounds like you’re keyboard turning; you should turn your camera with your mouse, which will give you a lot more control over your movement.

This sounds really useful, would be nice to have a list of all skills that can do this.

TPMN.1483:

I think any condition removal skill will also auto-drop the poison from your head.

Shouldn’t be too hard for you to go and test it.

Transforming to a slubling will also remove the poison field and drop it instantly on the ground when eating a magic mushroom.

Condi removals do this? Seems like I would have noticed from all the passive condi clear floating around.

That’s honestly really interesting if it’s true. Either way, I don’t think it’s worth losing 25 Might, Fury, and Quickness though.

Technically it is against the rules, but they generally don’t care as long as its for minor stuff like this, and that you be quiet about it

Posting so I remember to check here again

Oh, he’s been going invisible for years.

On the flipside, smaller fonts/other interface things would also be nice. Playing on a 15 inch laptop screen doesn’t leave much room even when you set everything to “smallest.”

Weakening Charge has three hits, and it is quite possible to land six back to back hits on a small target without any sort of teleportation skills. The trick is good positioning, not targeting the enemy, and aiming the camera straight down. I do it in the video I linked below here.

https://youtu.be/5T7ApkLgtHY

Edit: Walls can also make it much easier.

Hey guys, just been reading this for a bit, and although I’m not on the team to do this, I’d like to offer a few pieces of input from my own experience from raiding in my guild on thief, as the tank. We’ve had great success with it, and use it for our regular kills.

First and likely the biggest change I would make is the build of the tank. Simply put, all that toughness/vitality and survivability traits are not necessary for living; in fact, they may hamper your ability to survive. Running the standard damage build with full Berserker’s armor (with the minimum necessary toughness to hold aggro) and only swapping No Quarter to Invigoration Precision will provide much more than enough survivability. Either use S/P and spam Pistol Whip with Signet of Malice, or if you’re confident, use Staff with Channeled Vigor for a higher DPS tank. TL;DR, you get absolutely insane survivability by running a max damage build with Invigorating Precision, better than what you could get if you used a completely tanky build.

Next up, the topic of having the Ninja Nurse healers; I don’t think it is a good idea. Thief already has pretty good personal survivability, to the point where I don’t think it is necessary to have a healer, which would lower your DPS. I think that you’d be able to live without IP, but if you can’t just take it and have fun being immortal. That only leaves the condi team facing a serious issue…

They can’t run IP, and will be taking extra damage from the Lightning AoE. Here’s my suggestion for having them live; all four of them will be running P/D with a D/D offset, and at least 3 will take Shadow Refuge. When they run over to the lightning, they will swap to P/D to continue doing ranged DPS. One thief will drop SR on the lightning, stealthing them, so they can all do Sneak Attack for 5x projectile lifesteal. Combine that with putting them all in the same subgroup for optimal Leeching Venoms venomshare, and they should have enough lifesteal/sustain to live.

Next up, the Seekers. This will be a major problem for the group, considering the lack of knockbacks. My best advice will be to continuously move the boss away from the seekers, rather than focus on CC’ing them. Normally, this would be a problem since it would move the boss out of the AoE’s, but seeing as how thief doesn’t rely on AoE’s this isn’t a problem. In fact, it would actually boost the DPS of the condi team because they apply some Torment.

I’ll stop here considering how I’m not even a part of this, but if someone doesn’t show up and I’m online, feel free to send me a whisper, I’ll be sure to come. Good luck with this! It’ll be really cool to see.

Bump! We are actively recruiting members of all classes! PM me or one of the officers if you are interested.

http://darkrenegatus.enjin.com/

God kitten it, why do I have to be on NA??

I wish you the best of luck on this challenge. If you need another thief for NA, hit me up!

Swiftwynd.1685:

Thaddeus.4891:

Henry.5713:

I am sure one can actually finish the raid with a couple of thieves. Many spots are just filled with full damage builds (not including condition damage focused ones).
Thieves can spam short bow blasts on fields for “support” even or do some other plays.

You need to consider how people think about raids first, though:
-People want to finish content they haven’t mastered yet
-They want to finish it well and they don’t want to take chances
-They much rather expect the worst of you and instead invite someone with easier or just more support while having equal damage
-They will always prefer groups which won’t need them to communicate or have as much team work
-They will use what is “supposed” to be needed if they aren’t sure themselves
-They will exclude those who are “supposed” to be useless
-Etc.

Just think how it used to be with dungeons if you find this strange:
-People didn’t take a blast group if they could have a PS warrior
-They didn’t take an engineer for stealth if there was thief to take
-They would have never attempted a run without a Frost Bow
-Etc.
Raids lead to the same mentality times ten.

That should answer the “why” question.

That would be true if we knew what is best or not yet. Which we don’t. People heard rumours or saw a couple of video, or worth go check metabattle raid section (facepalm) and think they have an idea of what is good or bad. Why thief would be less efficient for the first fight as the 2 last spots for dps than other profession?

I would understand that you don’t want a thief when you don’t have your PS Warrior, 2 Herald for buff, your chronomancer, druid, condi engineer or tank. But once those sport are filled there is still 1-2 spot to fill and there is very reason to exclude a thief for those spot just because it’s a thief.

Especially considering that, with all of those roles filled as you mentioned, Daredevil berserker staff thief running double signets is the “realistically and consistently achievable” highest damage role you could slot in the melee group.

Once people catch on they will be looking for Daredevils to fill those last slots instead of “lolweneemoreHeraldsItheyarebestdps.” Good ones who can maintain their Scholar buff (hint, Invigorating Precision is worth losing +250 Ferocity imo, one vault heals you for 1/3 of your health or more).

Now, I’ll admit it DOES take more effort and skill to dps on Daredevil so the chance of getting a crappy one is way higher, but its does deal enough damage over its competitors to be chosen significantly.

While it is very important to maintain Scholar buff (and Flawless Strike, AND Keen Observer) for that total of 10% damage, 7% crit damage, and 5% crit chance, you still shouldn’t ever drop No Quarter for Invigorating Precision.(unless you’re tanking, but that’s a whole different story) 250 ferocity is about 17% crit damage, which is a very large amount. Even without Invigorating Precision, it is definitely still possible to maintain your Scholars, considering how great of a heal Signet of Malice is, and how Weakening Charge procs it three times. Even if you’re only maintaining Scholars 30% of the time without Invig Prec, it’s still better than maintaining it 100% of the time with Invig Prec.

While people exaggerate how little utility Daredevils bring to the group, it is no secret that they do have less than other classes. Daredevil is there to provide top tier DPS – you better go all in and do as much as you can.

Crystal Reid.2481:

If you try to zone into a raid instance while an encounter is in progress, you will zone in defeated and therefore won’t get any credit for loot.

This is a step in the right direction. Thank you.

Knight Vanir.6921:

I guess nobody plays rangers… They are the fastest, especially with druid and even better in combat with quick draw.
100% swiftness upkeep
Great Sword 3 is a leap
Staff 3 is a 1200 dash
with quick draw -66% recharge

Warriors are also great, with Sword and Greatsword
GS 3 and 5
S 2
faster wep swap

Thieves aren’t bad either, with SB, teleports. DD is even better with Dash.

Problem is that most people use Auto-targeting, which will force a target on you. So when you dash away from combat, you dash into an enemy instead.

Rangers are not the fastest class by any means. Sure, they have some nice leaps on short CD’s (if you can utilize Quick Draw, which wont be all of the time), but ever since the mobility nerf, teleports really stand above traditional movement skills. Using a GS rush/leap takes time, or in the case of Druid staff, 1.25 seconds. In those 1.25 seconds, you travel 1200 units, but a Thief using a single Infiltrators Arrow and then walking with swiftness for the rest of the time will travel approx 1250 units. The thief is then free to fire another IA, directly afterwards, ending with a total distance of 2150 units while the Ranger is at 1200 units.

We have seen one encounter, there is no way to make an overall judgement yet.

60 for the first one, 20 for each one after.

On the flip side, condi damage is fully effective on bosses who are resistant to physical damage while the break bar isn’t broken.

I’ll try not to say anything too specific, but after the last story mission, everything sort of ends abruptly. You see a cutscene, but nothing is said about the future direction of the Pact, nothing is said about a certain choice you make a couple missions ago, etc. The personal story has a whole celebration for the Pact after you defeat Zhaitan, but after the final mission in Heart of Thorns, absolutely nothing happens.

Unless – the only thing I haven’t seen yet is the meta event completed in Dragon’s Stand. But you can complete that theoretically before the story, so I don’t see how it could offer an epilogue.

Condi food had the +duration halved to 20%.’

This is a pretty major nerf to Sinister builds I guess?

Rednik.3809:

Stompy.1387:

Arah path 4 – 1 gold
SE path 1 – 35 silver (only heard from a friend)

I wonder if anyone except sellers will run arah after that. Now its absolutely 100% waste of time.

Based on the two data points so far, I guess Anet just heavy handedly cut gold rewards to 1/3. Will have to see though as the numbers come in

Let’s just post the rewards here to get all the numbers in one place as people do paths, just to get all the numbers in one place.

Arah path 4 – 1 gold
SE path 1 – 35 silver (only heard from a friend)

Later in the same Arah Path 4 – I triggered the last cutscene (walking up to the elites guarding the Bloodstone Shard) and the two people who I was trioing with both have GW2 crash. My GW2 stayed up though and kept the instance alive.

Just finished path. 1 GOLD + 26 SILVER

GG Anet, GG

LMFAO

Post the bugs you find in dungeons after the HoT patch here. HoT hasn’t even hit yet, and I’ll start it already.

Arah Path 4 – After Melandru, where Suratt opens the gate for you, there is an invisible wall and you cannot progress. Going to attempt to goat around it, brb.

Stompy.1387:

Stompy.1387:

Stompy.1387:

sooooooooooooo……..

As for my regular bump, this bug is still an issue and needs to be addressed.

Oh, that didn’t work.

As for my regular bump, this bug is still an issue and needs to be addressed.

The day they let us turn off the blue flames that Guardians use….

Stompy.1387:

Stompy.1387:

sooooooooooooo……..

As for my regular bump, this bug is still an issue and needs to be addressed.

I’m only about 80% sure of all this,(this is just me thinking about all my experiences in dungeons) but it seems like in every clip I looked at, the enemies always pathed to the last player who crossed the boundary. However, if another person crossed the boundary after somebody else successfully pathed the mobs, they wont start to move again. So, to summarize what sort of states the enemy AI is in:

1. Wait for player to cross boundary
2. Move towards player
3. (after they have been pathed) Standard mob aggro range AI

So since they just go into a standard after being pathed, they will only go through these mechanics once.

In regards to what I said about “moving to target” triggering multiple times, what I mean is that during step 2, the player that they are moving towards can be updated by another player crossing the boundary before step 3 happens.

(everything past this is just me rambling on thinking of random stuff atm, I may go test out later)
So what I said above holds true for normal dungeon runs (which is what I made the video for and why I didn’t bother to think about this beforehand), since everyone groups up for stealth and crosses the boundary within about a second of each other. But, in the cases I’ve experienced where someone else crossed the boundary significantly later (several seconds) but BEFORE the mobs have been pathed, I do not recall them ever just turning around to go after someone else. This would make my explanation about why it is always the last person incorrect, but it still seems as though they always path to the last person anyways.. My theory on why this happens is that after a short time, they “lock on” to a certain target? i don’t even know what I’m typing anymore, it’s late

frifox.5283:

Soundtrack is too loud, have to really pay attention to hear the spoken instructions

I knew I forgot to do something… Forgot to balance the audio =/

Will fix that in a few mins

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F7kgM52aus&feature=youtu.be

Still processing, but video/quality will be up soon.

Very very late, but I finally got around to uploading that video that I was talking about. I just haven’t really played GW2 or kept up with the forums for almost a month, so I lost the motivation to go out of my way and put the clips together. Anywho, here it is. If I missed something or need to change something, just tell me and I’ll actually get to it in a timely manner this time.

Stompy.1387:

sooooooooooooo……..

As for my regular bump, this bug is still an issue and needs to be addressed.

sooooooooooooo……..

As for my regular bump, this bug is still an issue and needs to be addressed.

So are Necros. Necros are great, Anet – Don’t nerf them!!!

Bingo.

Aleth.9630:

What about the Champion Risen Knight in Arah p4? How does its AI work exactly? I don’t remember it “pathing” to players normally, but in goated p4 runs I remember seeing it port on players after they’ve done the orb events. How does that work?

The Champion Risen Knight is a special enigma of its own.. few can escape his teleporting abilities, even fewer understand it.

Thanks for helping me with getting some clips Sly Devil. We got a bit over half of them done.

Also Sly had the idea of calling “path to location” as “triggered patrol.” Sounds better?

frifox.5283:

I don’t think CoE has any mobs to path. The risen on the stairs of p2/3 are a simple pathing event unlike the ooze on arah p1. As soon as you pass the top of 2nd stairs, the risen will simply walk down the platform and stop. Their destination is the platform and not players so no real need to “path” them.

That’s what I meant by “path to location.” It’s not really normal pathing in a sense, where the mobs chase you. However, it is the same in the sense in the fact that you pass a boundary and it triggers mob movement. The difference is that the mobs are scripted to walk to a location, instead of walking to a player.

Whether or not we should refer to this as a type of pathing is up for debate though. The main reason I’m calling it “pathing to location” is that I have no idea what else to call this mechanic.

Added:

Even though I agree that knowing how to path mobs is very useful there are certain cases where you can simply outrun the mobs, when im on my ele and I do arah p1 the starting part with the five (or four oozes) I can use consumables for stealth, fgs and ride the lightning and I get so far ahead of the oozes that they don’t even try to chase me anymore even though they initially started pathing to me. However the area that they gave up chasing me is where they remain they will not go back to their spawn point.

Another thing to add to the consumables section is that you can path mobs using ashlegion spykits and other stealth consumables and then quickly moving away or blinking.

This is all very true. In the video, I’d be showing some example ways to deal with mob pathing in general, which sometimes involves simply killing the mobs (after Shoggroth/Berserker abom arah p1/2), and not necessarily using stealth to truly “path” every set of mobs.

Also, since this is going to be a video directed towards newer players who don’t know about these mechanics, I’m going to make the video assuming that they’re in a full party with a thief for stealth.

pranker.3748:

Btw I did notice that it’s not usually the first player to trigger it or the first player to get to the location, but rather the second player. I often rush ahead on Thief and somebody else paths the mobs.

Very true. I’ll test this in a party of three, to see if it is the second or last player that paths the mobs.

Edit: I just remembered another path to location type of pathing. SE p3, after the bridge.

Parts of the video will be solo, but on the other hand I’m not in the mood to solo CoE laser room

The top of the stairs after the defend the laser event in p2/3 is the only place I can think of off the top of my head where there is a path to location type of pathing. Are there any others that are notable?

I’m sure there are tons of instances of pathing in dungeons that we don’t really notice since they don’t matter (or simply can’t see because they happen behind walls) so to clarify this video would be displaying all the notable cases of pathing that would affect your dungeon run.

Speaking of things I don’t know, can someone impart some knowledge to me about the CM p2 barrel event pathing? I’ve never really understood that one too much, other than just don’t kitten it up the first time (that’s how I get through the path)

Edit: are the destroyer crabs after CoE p3 second Alpha path to player or path to location? or what are they. I always just kill them because they seemingly give me a t6 claw half of the time, so I’m not sure. If nobody knows I guess I could go test it.

I’m running out of unique responses to the thread for bumping (it’s been three months, cut me some slack) sooooo I’m just going to copy paste from now on I guess.

As for my regular bump, this bug is still an issue and needs to be addressed.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

Jerus.4350:

IrisTheCasual.3742:

Lupi’s bubble is fixed. (Yay!)

And, his auto?

No. (Yay!)

wut

I asked in the General Discussion Thread a few days back if anybody would be interested in me making a video explaining the mechanics of pathing and showing all the groups of enemies that do it, and showing easy stealth strats to get past them. I didn’t really get too much of a response (I think), but if you think it’d be a good resource, I wouldn’t mind making a video on it. Hell, I could even do it tonight, if I can get a tour going >.<

Or if you’d rather make the video yourself, go right ahead, I won’t steal the thunder. I just thought I’d offer since you already do a ton of work for the dungeon community and figured it might make things easier for you.

That rally was perfectly calculated

I fall for it every time..

The emotional roller coaster is going to kill me one of these days.

Taku.6352:

Robin Skyshroud.1863:

Taku.6352:

If NPC collision was so important then why do they give us an option to turn it off with a press of a button?

I do not follow. Are you refering to Camera collision? I don’t see an option to turn off NPC collision.

That’s not collision, that’s an option to handicap yourself by having the game limit where you can stand.