Guild Wars 2

Ursan.7846:

Strifey.7215:

Funny story about LoSing. So it’s no secret I’m playing WoW to hold me over until the next batch of MMOs come out and I figure out what’s worth playing.

So I was doing a heroic mode of one of the MoP level 90 dungeons, and there’s this section before the last boss where 16 mobs spawn that mainly cast spells. The group I was playing with told me to LoS behind this stone pillar, and just like that all 16 mobs came around the corner where we proceeded to quickly AoE them down (since WoW doesn’t have the 5 mob limit). From what I hear, LoSing in PvP is a huge part of the game as well for melee vs casters.

That being said, WoW has a huge amount of strategy and mechanics for PvE that are pretty refreshing after playing GW2 PvE for 9 months, I wish GW2 integrated alot of the same stuff.

I would say LoSing is a pretty normal strategy in most games I’ve played.

Isn’t LoS useful in GW2 too though? Off the top of my head I use it a ton during CM runs, specifically for the fight with Seamus where you LoS his adds around a wall to AoE them down quickly, and the fight after you get past Wahlen where you LoS that huge mob inside the box. Or in Cliffside fractals, during the arm seals where you’re LoSing the chanters in the hallway.

Yes, we LoS in like 90% of my videos, it was more of a comment to the person a few posts up about LoSing in GW2 and it not being unique to GW2 and a general strategy that makes sense anytime you have melee vs range in pretty much any game.

Funny story about LoSing. So it’s no secret I’m playing WoW to hold me over until the next batch of MMOs come out and I figure out what’s worth playing.

So I was doing a heroic mode of one of the MoP level 90 dungeons, and there’s this section before the last boss where 16 mobs spawn that mainly cast spells. The group I was playing with told me to LoS behind this stone pillar, and just like that all 16 mobs came around the corner where we proceeded to quickly AoE them down (since WoW doesn’t have the 5 mob limit). From what I hear, LoSing in PvP is a huge part of the game as well for melee vs casters.

That being said, WoW has a huge amount of strategy and mechanics for PvE that are pretty refreshing after playing GW2 PvE for 9 months, I wish GW2 integrated alot of the same stuff.

I would say LoSing is a pretty normal strategy in most games I’ve played.

This is why I stopped playing. I have a couple videos that I can’t even bring myself to commentate at this point because I’ve moved to other games and just don’t really care anymore.

The recent story content and the gameplay/guide videos put out by a couple devs recently basically killed any hope I had of them improving anything related to challenging/teamwork based content outside of the very light, casual friendly stuff related to the living story.

oh someone on reddit mentioned they posted this on their facebook last week as well :x

Araziel.7201:

Dociu was the art guy for this game. Probably concept art.

The thing is all of the other artwork pieces actually had games associated with them and many are recent or upcoming releases.

He could be doing art for either an upcoming game or expansion, although the art feels a bit too modern for the GW universe.

Just searched online and here’s a better version of it on the intothepixel actual website:
http://www.intothepixel.com/artwork/2013_contest_winners.asp

While I was waiting for a co-worker to go to the bathroom, there was a video game art exhibit nearby.

I was taking a look at some really cool stuff, and happened to come across this picture. I wonder what it could be…

http://i.imgur.com/GXb9JY8.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/S01BBvw.jpg

Most of the artwork had actual games already released and the name of the game associated with the artwork. But not this one by Anet.

New game?

pretty much, basically why myself and many guildies moved on to other games. If all the updates are going to be casual fluff stuff and no challenging and interesting teamwork based content with proper rewards is going to come out, it’s time for another game.

I would say the only reason to take mes for CoE specifically is because of the couple of glitches they can provide which can speed things up, but yea 1 zerk guardian + 4 warriors is probably faster besides that.

I do it when leveling alts, but then again I only run in guild groups and pretty much everyone does it for alts.

We mainly use CoE for it.

I find it acceptable if there was a way to trade, even if it was 2:1

1 Hammer
1 Rifle
2 Spear
3 Trident
1 Focus
3 Shortbows

The only ones I’m actually using are the hammer and 1 spear though…. someone in my guild got a 4th torch last night, gg.

Wish I could trade some of the useless ones in.

How is sigil of seeking better than sigil of night when they both do 10% damage except night works on everything in nighttime dungeons…

AusterlitZ.7941:

Wethospu.6437:

It would be nice to know your test scenario.

his potion findings are correct,tested them a while back using the most steady dmg spell i had,doing numerous tries and resets just to be sure.I don’t recommend using any potion in CoE,the amount of silver lost on potions while you swap them 3 or 4 times is not worth it.You have svanir at the beginning,then undead,then inquest,then undead again,then inquest again,then finally undead,and that’s just p1.

That’s why you just use Undead… arguably the most fighting is for SA 3 times.

Got 45 bags from fotm 48 last night, seems same to me.

Not exactly sure why they decided the bomb path needs a respawning dredge pack in the first place, especially in the already longest fractal.

Cannon is way easier then stupid bombs.

I went up to 20s when fotm first came out with 0 agony because of terrible rng back when everyone was still learning them.

FotM 10-19 is balanced fine for not needing AR, and arguably 20-49 is as well since many people got to FotM 80 back in the day where anything past the 30s meant AR didn’t matter, and all Agony is avoidable other then Jade Maw, which can be bypassed using the 99% rez trick before 50.

JJBigs.8456:

Wow I could barley tell which phase was which because he was dying so fast. Also a note I saw but was not commentated on, I saw him using axe #5(Rupt), but I thought that is less DPS than just axe auto. So my guess is that he was trying to rupt a certain move so they didnt have to dodge or something? Anyone else pick up on that or can explain why he was using a non maximized DPS skill?

Edit: GZZZZZZZZZ! Awsome vid and time btw

At range it hits once, in melee it hits twice, once from the mace and once from the shockwave, so it’s actually higher dps assuming you’re not at range.

shiNn.2571:

which build do the mesmers play? You vid at your channel seem outdated
i saw a duellist and wonder why somebody prefer pistol instead of focus or Offsword.

It’s something they were using specifically for this speed kill which they don’t want to disclose atm.

I’ve already done this with the speed vs diversity method, main problem is with the way combat is, it is hard for them to balance fights for general pop. that an organized group can’t just burst through because of the lack of trinity and more emphasis on personal skill rather then tank/healer/dps allowing people to full spec dps and still survive.

That’s basically the main issue with the game atm.

In a game like WoW, you pretty much need a tank and healer for hard content, there is no dodge, no twitch style combat, no ability to complete something only on skill. Basically it’s much more gear and spell oriented like most traditional MMOs, and it’s easier to balance things when you know you’re going to have a tank/healer/3 dps to have a much smaller spectrum of what is easy/hard for a range of players.

In GW2, you don’t need a tank or healer. Things like healing and survivability stats help players who aren’t as good or can’t avoid all attacks, but they aren’t necessary once people learn a boss’ attacks, what strategies help mitigate damage through utilities/tactics that don’t hurt your dps, etc. So what you get is content that is trying to be balanced against the general PuG population that could be anything from 5 hybrids, 2 support/3 dps, 5 support, etc., which can easily be burst through by organized experienced players who don’t need much “survivability” other then the utilities/traits a class already brings.

This brings you to the current meta, taking classes which offer the best utility/survivability for dungeons through their skills while not hurting their dps potential, avoiding large damage through proper dodges, and maximizing dps to quickly burst down content that is balanced for a PuG group which isn’t running an ideal comp. or isn’t as skilled. Because of the inherent nature of the current game, this isn’t going to change unless they change mechanics so that dps isn’t the only thing that matters for clearing content, or they add a hard mode that is balanced more towards the more experienced organized group.

That being said, there are some interesting things in MF. While the protectors aren’t any harder then any other trash, they do require interrupts to quickly burst them down which is introducing a new tactic other then straight dps. The weapon test is a more interactive timed event (if you fixed the bugs that let you afk in the corner) then things like boring Grenth in Arah 4 or burrows in AC3 and it introduces jumping avoidance which is cool, and while the last boss is unique, the boss suffers from the earlier point, a high dps group can ignore tactics and burst them down ignoring the stacks, etc.

Overall it is a good direction for dungeons over what is currently in place. There are also very few bugs for a new dungeon compared to some of the bugs that get released and stay around forever in current dungeons.

Oh btw we figured out how to melee him. I’ll probably have an updated P4 guide up this weekend. Shaved off like 4-5 min from the dungeon run.

There’s a safe spot that is clear of pretty much every green ball in melee range, he only has one attack in melee range (doesn’t spawn trees), you can either dodge it or interrupt it. In an organized group you have enough interrupts to almost never have to dodge since for some reason Defiance doesn’t apply to interrupting it.

If your going to change anything about Path 4 it needs to be grenth, killing like 20 wraiths is boring, long, and unchallenging.

For full dungeons, I vote HotW, I hate that dungeon and the boring bosses with too much health. I feel bad for groups who don’t have alot of dps, must take forever.

Rising Dusk.2408:

For instance, even though the Dredge popping out of their clown car invulnerable is annoying, it seems very intentional because of their animation and not like a bug at all.

After reading this I got dredge at FotM 48 last night and paid attention when they were coming out of the cart since we full melee them.

It’s not an animation, it lasts like 5 seconds. The animation is like 2-3 seconds. The invulnerable lasts way past where it should.

Also they bug out throughtout the fight after spawning. I specifically remember a time where we had 2 dredge left in a spawn, and they suddenly became un-attackable with like 25% health left for a few seconds. I have my fotm 30 dredge guide recorded that should be going up soon once I commentate it for more footage as well, but having fought spawns and mobs in every other place besides this cart, and having melee stacked on this cart probably 100 times now, the behavior of the dredge does not seem intentional unless Anet likes coding buggy mobs that are unique to this specific fight.

High level fractal rewards suck, although Robert did hint they were aware and possibly looking into it… which was like a month ago though.

Definitely needs personal dps meters for testing builds and traits. I’m surprised they don’t at least have the test dummy like in GW1, because the current PvE test dummies in lion’s arch are pretty much useless.

For people who actually like improving, testing optimal builds, and running efficiently, dps meters are a good way to test various builds, weapons, etc. There are other methods that are more annoying, like recording videos and timing things like I currently do.

Not having a dps meter isn’t going to make people not test things, min-max, etc. This game is already mature enough where people have figured out some optimal builds for things.

Dredge Fractal: The dredge that come out of the armory truck in the champion fight room stay invulnerable for a few seconds, makes this event take even longer then it should.

We only run certain classes, don’t think many people have our necros and rangers geared up as much as guardian, warrior, mesmer, and ele.

Since it’s pretty well known that Rangers and Necros are UP for pve, we don’t bother with them.

Speed killing GL for example, is possible because you can burst him down fast enough where you don’t need stability on your dps classes. With guardians Stand your Ground and a shield block backup/blink backup on the warriors mesmers, you’re pretty much guaranteed to kill him before he uses a 3rd dome in phase 3.

Without high dps classes, reflects, and high burst utility through things like quickness, FGJ + Signet of Inspiration, and banners, you would need to take more defensive utility which turns a 1:10 fight into something closer to 2:30 min assuming no one dies.

You can actually leash the mobs as long as you don’t hit them. Once you do damage to them you get an agro position which overrides the turret.

I actually just updated my speed run guide last weekend, it shows how you can run it without having to take a mandatory wipe on one character for the waypoint.

But yea the turret is a little close forcing you to dodge right when you port in.

I did fotm 1 and 2 on like a level 10 thief. <10 fotm is super easy.

They posted on twitter and there’s a few top 50 threads on reddit already that it’s a bug and they’re working on it.

They globally buffed signets, it doesn’t even matter since no good warrior runs any signet (except under some very rare circumstances) other then rage, and you are using that for the active, not the passive.

randomfightfan.4091:

Strifey.7215:

I can make excuses also:

- We didn’t have 25 might at slave driver
- I didn’t use banner rush
- I messed up on one acolyte
- I got knocked down by the flame effigy
- We didn’t run Hounds of Balthazar on 3 warriors and just stick 1 warrior with Banner Elite which is the same thing as SoR + 4 FGJ + Mesmer Signet.

Just make a video and then if you beat it we’ll try again.

To be fair I personally wouldn’t count it towards a speed run if the warriors used hounds same as I wouldn’t count it if the thieves used it. Reason being is that they are a race skill. If the thieves used thieves guild that’s fine as you’re not further forcing annoying restrictions. It would make it so instead needing to be a warrior or get kicked from the run, you’d need to be a human warrior, or get kicked from the run. I left thief out b/c people are still generally dumb and kick thieves on sight, no matter what. Perfect example is I couldn’t get into a run for an hour yesterday just cause I wanted to use my zerker thief instead of my zerker warrior. Nobody wants that to be even further abused since for people like me, I don’t use human. I have a norn thief and sylvari warrior. After 1300 hours on my thief, I’m not going to re-roll human just b/c one guy thinks it’s better than thieves guild.

In short, use the skills that come with your class, not your race.

The reason I brought it up is because they used hounds in their video.

But at this point, I don’t think any of this is relevant for 99% of pugs since they’re not going to have coordination to pull off alot of the stuff anyways. This is just pure speed running like in GW1 to beat times.

I personally don’t really care if my average farm time is 5:50 or 6:00 min when normally running, my video was basically made to call out the stupid assumptions that a 4war/1mes group would take 6:30 now based on my old video even though it’s a couple months old, doesn’t used optimized rotations, sigils, runes, etc. Even now, we’re just running ruby orbs instead of scholar runes. There’s always room for improvement and there’s no doubt we could go faster then 5:43 just like Phira could go faster then 5:53, but I’ll focus on improving once another video beating 5:43 goes up instead of making excuses.

Phira.3970:

“Please be advised that a new build will be available within the next hour or two.”

Not within my power to create another video now until after patch. (Nobodies online + going out in a couple of minutes). We’ll have to hope that there isn’t a CoF nerf.

I’d like to comment on some part of the video.

-In Strife’s video, first gate opens at 0:55 whereas our opened at 1:02 because I got stuck in cinematic for 5-10 seconds-ish. If you even that out, it would be 5:43 vs. 5:45 already.

-Once again, before the last boss, one of our thief got stuck in cinematic so he was late to the battle. The person recording the video was also late to the battle as well, he shouldn’t have waited that long or have used elite there.

-One of the Warrior was late to the slave driver fight and then slave driver got pulled because one of the thieves used Guild of Thieves (and I told them not to use that elite), which pulled slave driver losing us about 1 or 2 ish seconds.

-At the boulder, I didn’t forgot to get Blink so we took 9 seconds to get to the other side whereas Strife’s team took 6 seconds.

-I didn’t feedback the last boss’s hit which lost us a second (it does about 7% dmg of the boss’s total hp)

-And as Strife mentioned, gearing. He’s on full ascended. We don’t have full ascended.

Just by merely accounting for our lesser CPU spec having us stuck in cinematic all the time would have already evened our time to Strife’s team (losing about 10 seconds). Then the Mesmer actually blinking would of put us at a faster video than Strife’s (with 3 seconds).

As I said before, a video takes into account all these other factors that don’t have any role in class composition. If you want to make an argument that because of Phira’s crappy cpu (and other thieves too), therefore Warriors are better, you can (but I don’t think that’s logical).

I can make excuses also:

- We didn’t have 25 might at slave driver
- I didn’t use banner rush
- I messed up on one acolyte
- I got knocked down by the flame effigy
- We didn’t run Hounds of Balthazar on 3 warriors and just stick 1 warrior with Banner Elite which is the same thing as SoR + 4 FGJ + Mesmer Signet.

Just make a video and then if you beat it we’ll try again.

Here’s your updated video:

VanityValentine.6203:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

VanityValentine.6203:

Therefore his/her group does more DPS.

Quite possible. But I personally don’t care about having the fastest Slaver Driver kill record. Since the difference between their slave drive kill and an average pug is 3-4 seconds, it isn’t highly likely to be the deciding factor in total dungeon speed run time. I reckon with our new warrior rotation for the gate we might do it about a single second slower or roughly the same.

But again, even in a dungeon as simple as cof1 there are 1000 little inefficiencies that can happen which add up to significant time by the end. So a total dungeon speed run means playing as perfect as possible from zone in until zone out, and that is what matters to me.

tl;dr: killing a boss 1.5 seconds faster is irrelevant if you do everything else 20 seconds slower.

You were right about the 20s slower.

They have a video up
Faster, even tho Acolyte spawned 5 seconds slower each for them and with the 5 seconds delay for the gate to open after the Slave Driver kill.
And in addition, they did a 50% TW compare to your 100% and with a 4sec Reveal nerf for thieves.

If this was done at the same date as yours(back when acolytes spawn in 40 sec, and back when the gate after slaver boss opens 5 sec faster), it easily would of been a 5:28-5:33min run.

and as mentioned, Its not their fastest.

I’ll be happy to update my video, we have improvements since then as well, and people are forgetting the banner benefit buff which is more noticeable for the last boss.

lol a guildy told me about this thread, not gonna read through it right now. Except thinking my 6:00 video is edited is just dumb, when in my commentary I tell you how to speed up ferrah.

And editing for the acolytes? Get a stop watch or look at skill cooldowns instead of showing you have no clue what you’re talking about.

That being said, that video was pre-time warp. But with banner buffs and a couple of dps improvements, I’m pretty sure I could re-create it, but haven’t bothered trying. Been busy lately with a new job so haven’t been putting up new videos, but hopfully have some re-records and finished fractals coming soon.

They should add crystaline dust like AC has the low level dust. I’d be super happy getting 10-20 dust chance in chests, especially considering the supply on dust that is used in a ton of MF and crafting recipes is way too low.

If the only thing you’ve done is CoF then you have a bad representation.

There are plenty of trash mobs that require some tactics, although basic. Try CM, Arah, and 30+ fractals.

Top 3 dungeons that need re-working.

1. HotW 1
2. HotW 2
3. HotW 3

Boom.

Crossplay.2067:

What I find sad about this entire thread is how many of you are placing speed over fun. I’d rather run this with a suboptimal pug that’s easy-going than with OCD speedrunners that obsess over every second.

Most people find speed fun.

When doing things mindless and easy that you have done hundreds of times, trying to run as fast as possible which requires organization and teamwork is what keeps people interested and challenged.

There’s a reason there is competition in every aspect of life, from eSports, normal sports, even random activities like eating, speed runs of single player games on youtube, etc. People like competition, like improving, like seeing how fast they can do things, etc. If this stuff wasn’t fun, it wouldn’t exist.

What I find sad is you don’t realize this and think everyone finds it fun to be slow, “easy-going”, and doesn’t like to improve/compete. I also find it sad that you think speed runs are mutually exclusive from fun, while most people who actually do speed run dungeons find that is the only fun part of dungeons left and is the main reason they still run them. For many people, an inefficient pug would be less fun then trying to speed run.

That’s the whole point of the fight… the danger of falling in the lava. If you fall in the lava more then once it’s your fault because there is plenty of room to position yourself so you’re knocked back onto the connecting pathway on either side, or use stability a few seconds after someone gets stunned. Once you know that he knocks back then don’t stand where you can fall off.. not that hard.

What’s up with people wanting to take out any danger or strategy from a boss that requires them to do more then auto attack.

Minor things on your rotations that can be improved:

-Defeat Foundry defenses:
-When you’re first running in as the mesmer pulls, start of with mace 5 for knockdown so the mobs don’t move.
- On the second turret, all 4 warriors should Eviscerate to pretty much instantly kill it then after use healing surge to get all your adrenaline back for Slave Driver

In General:
You should be saving your eviscerate until the end of the fight. The amount of damage you lose by losing 9% crit chance and 12% base damage and having to re-build adrenaline outweighs eviscerate damage, by saving it until the end you get the benefit of both. Only times I ever use Eviscerate during a fight on any dungeon is when I’m going to use healing surge and think that I’ll be fine with a lower heal.

Similar on the last boss, you always want to WW because it is the highest dps skill you have outside of eviscerate. You should be swap cancelling from 1 auto attack + 100B + WW + swap every 5 seconds. This will reduce the distance of your WW and almost immediately let you hit with auto attacks on axe. Alternatively, you should be using Mace 5 immediately out of a swap cancel since it is a ranged attack and hits twice. If you just 100B then wait until your cooldown, your dps is going to be lower from the slow GS auto attacks then 1 AA + 100B + WW + swap canceling.

Rising Dusk.2408:

While we’re talking about this fractal—Rob, please lower the HP of the bloody Ettin/Flame Shaman. They are not even a difficult fight, they just have a billion HP and it’s not fun. Thanks.

Worst part of this fractal.

Before they add armor they need…

1. MF recipes so we can roll new stats on the tons of useless ascended gear pieces clogging up inventory.
2. A way to salvage Ascended to get back infusions, especially with expensive laurel infusions
3. Add in the retroactive laurel for achievments they talked about when daily laurels first came out so we have a way to equip alts
4. Add Ascended Gear to WvW since they’ve moved away from it just being a gear type to progress Fractals
5. Add more then just rings and backpieces to fractals so that it is still a viable and rewarding gameplay type.
6. Improve dungeon gear in some way because once Ascended armor comes out dungeon tokens will just be used for salvaging ectos through rares instead of rewarding people as a way to gear characters through challenging content.

I wish you could mystic forge them, it’s kind of dumb that majors are worth more then most of the superior versions because you can’t mystic forge them. It would also help normalize some of the rune/sigil prices.

You do understand many people who played when fractals were first introduced got to 20 with 0 AR, and you understand that many people who do 40+ dailies up until recently took more agony damage then you would at level 10 with 0 AR, and people who did 50-80 before the soft cap basically played with 0 AR.

You don’t need AR for anything other then jade maw, everything else is more of a crutch if you don’t know how to dodge agony attacks.

Time warp lasts 10 seconds.

Since it roughly doubled your dps, then naturally what you normally did in ~20s was condensed into 10s.

Since Quickness was nerfed 50%, now you are compacting about 15s of damage into 10s.

The flip side is, banners got a buff to mitigate some of that dps loss from quickness. Realistically, it doesn’t make a huge difference, you take a few seconds longer, on paper, it would be about 5s longer for slave driver and 5s longer for effigy.

In general, it had a bigger impact on PvP. The fact that banners got buffed really doesn’t mean there is that big of difference on total dungeon clear times.

technically it’s soft capped since if someone is currently 80, you could have them start odd level fractals to get you to 79.

But assuming you are all at 50, correct, you can’t currently pass jade maw at 50+

How my guild does it, it’s pretty easy to run the first pack if you all run at the same time.

Swiftness + Double dodge when you pass the mobs means you stay out of combat and get to the turn of the ramp with taking no damage. Every class has skills that make running trash, especially short distances like this much easier. It may require you to switch skills for one cooldown if needed, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to run the first group after the thief boss. The rest of it is just using AoEs since most of the groups are normal mobs that die almost instantly, which leaves a couple of silver mobs.

Yea it happens once in a blue moon