Guild Wars 2

No sure why you’d want no boons, unless it’s a self imposed “hard mode”.

Thinking about it, it’d be quite difficult to pull off unless you took bad (or no) traits and used no skills aside from auto attack.

If you’re just looking for a general overview of what to do, you can watch this video by Goku and learn a few tips from one of the best.

Great kill Sesshi

Fractal noob here, but may I ask why the spirits don’t walk towards the boss? In the times I’ve fought Bloomhunger, the spirits always move forwards and get cleaved down by AoEs which means more storm spirits end up spawning.

Gaile says the $50 is for HoT + core game and there won’t be any other editions, no extra character slots included either apparently.

Taku.6352:

Those notes are most likely a hoax as Anet has never sent detailed patch notes to 3rd parties before actual patch release. Not to mention it’s missing stuff like rebuilding of LA.

Have a look at this post in reply to that thread. Of course the “proof” image could also be faked as well, but believe what you must, it seems legit to me.

Hm I don’t play thief at all, but I thought there was a patch recently that changed or removed the ability to target enemies behind walls? I distinctly remember people saying “RIP thief Arah P2 skip” (on the way to Alphard).

Maybe I’m misremembering, either way, great job and thanks for answering

Really nice strats, particularly for the ooze.

2 noob questions:

Do you not have to path the elite oozes at the start? I guess they have a leash range by the time you reach the first boss, but then I don’t understand why in the bloopers you sometimes had the oozes follow you.

How did the thief have the elite hunter pre-targetted in the skip after Lupi?

Fair enough, I just remember during the Trio Tournament there was 1 or 2 teams that used an engi in their comp for this path and they seemed to have consistently faster times. Although of course this could just be down to tactics and practise of the teams.

I’m sure you guys tested it already, but I have to ask, did you try replacing the thief for an engineer for better vuln uptime particularly for the underwater fight?

Considering almost half the run is down to the final boss, it seems most time saved could be there. However losing a thief for their dps on the first half of the dungeon may not make it worth it.

Wethospu.6437:

Evolved Husk has been tested against all potions and nothing works.

Ah well, someone should inform DnT of that then

Thanks for info again!

Wethospu.6437:

It works against Molten, Krait, Nightmare Court, Aether and Watchwork.

This is reassuring to know. From Fracture’s posts it seemed Nightmare Court pots were better, but I’ve always used Scarlet Slaying since they’re cheaper to buy and have a wider range of uses.

On a slightly related note, do you know if Scarlet Slaying pots work on the Evolved Husk in CoE P2? I see people in DnT using the Nightmare Court pots for it, whereas that Google Docs sheet only lists it as “Summoned Minion[s]”.

fracture.9754:

Nightmare court > Scarlett armies for TA UP+FW.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SKAWQhoBOads8n61LzXniXFHDejeeL3zCM7ywz94gZY/edit#gid=1279985048

Can anyone confirm this?

I took from gw2dungeons.net that Potion of Slaying Scarlet’s Armies were equally as good as Nightmare Court Potions, in fact I’ve been telling pugs this information too. Please don’t tell me I’ve been wrong all this time?

Wethospu, I need some answers!

dboylolz.3916:

http://youtu.be/-DE8It42yQI

Speaking as a random pug, the problem with that rotation is that most people demand you drop Ice Bow immediately for them to use in dungeons so as you can get a quick freeze and burst.

So for me, fights just start with dropping Ice Bow, Ice bow 5 (if boss isn’t frozen), cast Lightning Storm, Ice Bow 4, 3, then I do Earth 2 (Eruption), Fire 2 (Lava Font), Fire 3 (Flame Burst), Fire 5 (Meteor Shower) and then Fire 2 (Lava Font) again.

I also tend to stack might prior to a fight, if possible, but in some cases you can’t.

I know that isn’t the ideal DPS rotation as you asked for, but I was giving my opinion from a realistic stand point and obviously when you’re in a disorganised party as opposed to a solo scenario.

spoj.9672:

Signet of Vampirism.

I actually use that heal skill for my condi build at Triple Trouble for killing husks, mainly for the Aristocracy rune + Signet Mastery synergy though

Directly from the ReadyUp video

Dulfy will probably have a list of all the traits on the Reddit post or her website soon.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Warrior’s Deep Cuts (bleeds 50% longer) gone? WTF.

It has been moved and combined with the grandmaster minor trait Attack of Opportunity.

Skady made this post a month ago (followed by a train of hate) which looks to be exactly what you’re looking for and she uses Monk runes.

CoF P1 has been broken from the latest patch it seems. Ferrah can’t start dialogue with the Slave Driver, instead is just pushed back…

Started an LFG for HotW P3 with the description “P3 lvl 80 Zerk Experienced” since I wanted a “quick” run, or as quick as you can get with this path. However I am aware few do this path, outside of getting the Dungeon Master achievement, and so looking for experienced people is always going to be a stretch.

Clearly I’m such a dirty elitist.

OK story time, I’ve been kicked on a few occasions, the only 2 that I can remember are:

1) In TA Forward, I was playing on my thief (I don’t usually play thief) and on the short skip after the path selection, I and most of the party reached the stacking spot for the champ warden but an ele went down somehow. He proceeded to ask “thief, y u no shadow refuge?”, to which I replied “because there really isn’t any need for it on that skip?”.

I think he was playing with some guildies or friends, so they kicked me pretty quickly after that. However I actually soloed the champ vine at the start of the dungeon since they all wiped to it, so I kinda knew the level of the group anyway and wasn’t too bothered about being kicked. The ele that went down on the skip was using an all signets build.

2) On one of the paths in CoE, this was a “zerk meta, ping gear, 10k AP etc” type LFG, we arrived just before the laser room with the 5 elite golems, 1 person in the party had DCed and another was still running behind so I was waiting for them before entering the room.

As I was waiting I was sorting out my inventory, the 2 others in the party that were briefly waiting there decided to just charge in and I only saw this about 10-20 secs after they did this so I was late in joining them. We all died inside that room at the usual stacking spot on the left, the 2 that died blamed me for their deaths for whatever inexplicable reason, when I was merely waiting for the others in the party to rejoin and catch up.

I just tested it again and it was my mistake, I was testing it too far away. I was unaware of the range of the Krait rune proc and it appears to be very short range, certain below the range of scepter skills.

Double checking the wiki page, it’s 360 units. Well, at least I can use the Flesh Golem as an elite, the charge has a 40sec cooldown and the 6th Krait rune bonus has a 30sec cooldown.

Hmm I was testing it in Heart of the Mists and it didn’t proc at all, I’ll need to test in a PvE map.

Raina.8642:

Having said all that, would still run sigil of corruption on an offhand, with bursting and strength as the primary weapons. Runes of aristochracy combined with sigil of strength will be lots of might, and im not 100% sure about reaching/breaching that cap, but still would prioritise might, and corruption. I believe bursting increases your condition damage, not your condition stat.

Raina, having Sigil of Corruption or Bursting is useless for the wurm event because my condition damage stat is already capped.

Small update on this, I now have a level 80 Necro and have been on 2 wurm runs. I don’t have the Aristocracy runes yet so I tried a different build with Krait runes. Sadly the Necro doesn’t have any low cooldown elite skills, I thought the Flesh Golem Charge would proc the runes, but it doesn’t.

I tested out the Terror trait instead of Master of Corruption and the added Fear damage does seem good, but of course I’ll need to test the full might build I linked in my initial post to see which is better overall.

I’ve never actually been part of the condition damage team in the Triple Trouble event, however from my understanding in organised runs (which are the ones I attend), you will have to solo a husk. In this case, the vast majority of the conditions on a husk should be your own.

I’m in the process of levelling a Condi Necro with the intention of dealing with the Husks at the Triple Trouble world boss event. I have never played a Necro before so this is just purely theorycrafting and the build may not work well at all, however I would like some feedback and opinions.

Most, if not all, other Condi Necro builds that I’ve seen are aimed at level 80 content, i.e. WvW or PvP. The difference with a Triple Trouble specific build is the downscaling and condition damage cap that occurs in Bloodtide Coast.

The downscaled condition damage cap for each wurm is 906 for Amber, 838 for Crimson and 880 for Cobalt, so in other words, the maximum unscaled condition damage that you ideally would want is 1626.

What I’ve seen from the majority of Condi builds is that they use something like Undead runes, which is useless because you go over the condi cap or Krait runes to maximise the total number conditions, so here’s my first question:

Is it better to have a larger number of different conditions or simply have fewer, but more stronger ones?

The reason I ask this is because I was thinking of using a Might stacking build with Aristocracy runes to push past the condition damage cap.

The build I’ve come up with is this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNArYWn0ISjNWdDu2AHOmoXogOAKzRI6HYCyAqiCA-ThSAABY8AAES9nZ0HAwhAQMlChcGAewsDh7PElyu2UCSKAYmDA-e

I’ve mainly chosen exotic equipment since that’s what I’m most likely going to be buying. As for the 2 ascended pieces, I’ve obtained a Rabid ring via a random Fractals drop and I’m in the process of crafting an ascended Rabid back. As you can see, the condition damage with this build is 1634, which is already over the condition cap.

Some more questions:

Would it be better to use more condition orientated sigils, i.e. Agony, Earth, Geomancy, Malice and Doom as opposed to Strength and Battle?

As said earlier, I’ve never played a Necro before so I don’t actually know if the traits are any good. Would it be better to use Chill of Death and Dhuumfire rather than Reaper’s Might and Close to Death?

Is Signet of Vampirism a viable heal for the Triple Trouble event? I’ve picked it purely to proc the Signet Mastery trait for the Might stacks, but I have no idea how good the heal actually is. It would be useless if you’re going to die all the time.

Would it be worth putting a sigil of Perception on the 2nd set of weapons to raise crit chance?

I have no idea what the average number of Might stacks you can sustain with this build, so I don’t know if this build is any good at all, but hopefully someone smarter than me can answer some of these questions.

Iris Ng.9845:

1. It is not a safe spot per se. It requires a bit of jumping puzzle skill to get you to the right height AND the whole group has to take the portal almost at the SAME TIME to bug the cannoneer’s tracking algorithm. Additionally, one should not drop down way before others which will make Horrik and co. target the group almost instantly and it’s very hard to see that coming. I don’t recommend this method for a pug group because it more or less fails if anyone in the group makes mistake, and you risk to restart the fight over. If you’re in an organized group and want to try it out, as soon as you enter the room, go to the far right wall; there is a column under one of the cannoneer, the wall next to it has an invisible ledge that you can jump up to it and hang at mid wall.

Interesting, I’ll have a look for it if I ever get to Mai Trin again.

Thanks!

Jeremlloyd.6837:

Also as a mesmer you can portal everyone to a safe spot for the cannon phase

Where about is this safe spot?

Jeremlloyd.6837:

Mesmer have access to block with Sword offhand and with Blade Training, you’re able to block every single shadowstep attack from Mai (but the best is to reflect it with Temporal Curtain / Feedback / Warden, assuming you have Warden’s Feedback, Inspiration VIII)

Would it be better to trait or untrait the focus then, given that the lightning projectile can be blocked by untraited wardens, but the shadowstep can be reflected with temporal curtain and traited warden?

Thanks for the replies all!

Bit of a dumb question, but if you complete a Story dungeon where you didn’t open/start it, does that still unlock the Explorable dungeon mode for you?

Gah, it doesn’t look like I can delete this topic. Mods, please delete this, apologies.

I’ve found the answer I was looking after some more searching.

maxinion.8396:

Isn’t the size of the animation (whirling stuff) what actually determines reflection? If you just focus on that, it might help (though obviously not when he’s not attacking).

That’s what I was initially wondering about, but it’d be stupid for Anet to make the animation model be the size of the reflection as otherwise larger characters would have a massive advantage.

Yes, I guessed as much. This would mean then that the reflection size should technically (or at least hopefully) be the largest character you can make in the game, assuming it’s in accordance to the actual model size.

This somewhat makes me regret making an Asura mesmer as it’s sometimes difficult to know what is or isn’t going to be reflected, in amongst the other iWarden bugs.

This may be a dumb question, but does the range or area of which the iWarden reflects/hits change depending on character size?

One would think not as it’d be far too easy to just use a larger character or race (i.e. the tallest Norn you can make) to get the maximum amount of reflect coverage, but this dawned on me as I play an Asura mesmer and during dungeons or fractals where you get transformed into another race, the size of the iWarden is obviously much larger. Even if the reflection area is the same between character sizes, it certainly makes it easier to judge how far you can stand from within the iWarden.

bhagwad.4281:

I really wish GW2 had a kind of “Master of combat” like they had in GW1 giving us DPS numbers periodically.

Balkanpy from Reddit made a DPS display app.

I’ve not used it, so I don’t know how good or accurate it is.

Soyboy.3548:

Poke and dodge and evade bigger attacks with blurred frenzy, distortions, interrupts. If you are using a sword, you likely get vigor from crits (or maybe have the vigor on shatter trait). You also weapon swap.

That’s one of the things I don’t quite get, yes you hit a couple of times and back out, but you’ll almost always get hit back in the process. I find that I don’t have enough endurance to last a longish fight against mobs, even with the vigor from crits.

I somewhat touched upon in my previous post, but I don’t see how a sword is more effective than a greatsword when I can be continually hitting an enemy compared to a few stabs here and there with the sword.

As I’ve said, I understand the DPS numbers and theoretically, the sword is better, but that’s like against a golem training dummy where you can just stand there auto attacking away.

I know it’s a matter of skill, but I just find I’m able to take down groups of enemies or even champions with a greatsword far more effectively than using whatever S/* combo. I feel that in open world PvE, the less time you’re waiting for cooldowns and in particular, not having to heal during or after every little skirmish, makes life much easier.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The simple answer is, you are better off with a GS than with pure melee if you are playing solo. Pure melee is mainly used for speedrunning dungeons, but it only works well if:
- the mobs are close together
- you play in a melee oriented group for boon stacking
- if you know every move of your enemy
- if the distance between you and the mobs does not matter (group pulls)

Most of the time the mobs are just dead in the time it would take you to get into melee range anyway. And you take no damage which means no downtime.
Take a sword/x in your off set and you will do fine.

Yeah, I was wondering if that was simply the case, since when some people say “PvE” they include WvW and dungeons and are usually roaming in a group. In which case, I understand how using melee is better and also achievable since you’re typically not the one with the aggro.

I pretty much play exclusively what I call open world PvE, which is just that, no WvW, no dungeons/Fractals and I play solo.

Soyboy.3548:

Well if you backroll you can create a clone which can be used for shatters or debuffs if you trait them. Stuns and weapon swaps are for when you need endurance time or blurred frenzy is down. I find greatsword to be boring and avoid it in all builds unless I’m in need of long range (although someone explain to me how it does the same damage in close range as a scepter auto attack and can be through multiple people…that needs a nerf).

Again, I’m probably just bad at using melee or playing in general, but I find if you’re darting in, do a couple of hits, dodging out and shattering then almost everything is on cooldown and you’re left running away.

At least with a greatsword, I can still be hitting an enemy whilst strafing when things are on cooldown and typically I only use my dodges to actually dodge big attacks or ranged attacks. With a sword, you’re dodging constantly and left with no endurance and you’re getting hit with melee attacks.

As boring as the greatsword may be, I find it’s the only reliable way for me to do open world PvE content.

Short disclaimer: OK, I’ll straight up and admit that I don’t think I’m particularly skilled at the game or at this profession. I don’t play any WvW, PvP and I’ve hardly even touch dungeons or Fractals.

So with that in mind, please bear with post and my noob questions:

I’ve read a lot of posts on what are “good” or “best” builds for PvE and the vast majority would say a phantasm build utilising a sword MH coupled with either a focus or pistol. I understand the numbers and that DPS wise, the sword is the best.

What I don’t understand is how to actually play using melee. I find that if I go in on an enemy, I’ll just get hit and have to do several dodges, until you’re out of endurance and end up getting hit more. Whilst the sword has a higher base damage auto attack, I can use a greatsword, stand away from the enemy and continually hit them.

Yes the greatsword auto attack is fairly lacklustre, but I’m always hitting the enemy, whereas with the sword, I’d get in maybe 3 hits in tops (assuming I don’t use Blurred Frenzy) before I’m forced to duck out.

Case in point, in the Heart of the Mists, on the East side of Hall of Memories there’s a Jotun called “Chieftain Utahein” and a bear creature called “Svanir”, both of which hit fairly hard and fast. Using a build focussing on greatsword (i.e. 20/25/0/0/25), I can use a greatsword and kill either of them in around 25 seconds and not having to heal at all. If I use a sword orientated build (i.e. 10/30/0/0/30 or 0/20/0/25/25), not only does it take me longer to kill, but I have to heal up in the middle of the fight simply because I’ve been hit too much.

I am even able to solo champions, providing they don’t do an excessive amount of ranged attacks with the greatsword build that I use, utilising simple circle strafing and the cripple from iBerserker and the Crippling Dissipation trait. Killing them may take 5-10 minutes, but at least I’m confident that I can take them down, whereas if I went in with pure melee, I don’t think I’d stand a chance.

TL;DR How do you melee against mobs of enemies or even single fast hitting enemies and stay alive?