Guild Wars 2

My first solo was on guardian with mace for an additional block. Took about 10 hours to kill the big bad wolf in about 15 minutes. The times when bubbles were scary without reckless dodge/evasive arcana bring old memories.

obal.3218:

That was back when anchor was meta and no one had ever done it on anything besides warrior.

I did it :p

Thaddeus.4891:

Well, it was most likely because I’m usually not the only one giving fury in the group. Even in guild run, we usually don’t adjust our composition much so Warrior and Ranger probably add some time to my own fury. Anyway, its been a long time since the last time I used persisting flames on my LH Ele, but I clearly remember seeing 2min+ of fury sometimes. But like I said, it was most probably because of other source of fury too. Anyway, the point wasn’t about the exact time of fury, it was more to point out that a S/X Ele with Persisting Flames can give enough fury by its own.

Fury like most of the boons, stacks up to 9 times. That means that if you or any of your party members cannot grant longer fury than 10 seconds (like signet of rage) you cannot have fury stacked for 2 minutes because that’s mathematically impossible.

DaveGan.8065:

Traits skew the discussion even further, as pretty much any offensive trait spec will heavily favor Knight over Soldier (the only stat where Knight falls short of Soldier relatively is precision, and this is easily offset by 1.) traiting into power, and 2.) 4 of the 8 professions having ferocity in the precision line as well). I think we can agree to ignore defensive traits, yes?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13KQ8cDeTNifn7vsJzuJkWto_5fyifDpKhmentXtod1w/edit?usp=sharing

This was an old spreadsheet I haven’t updated, and the crit chance equation off by 10 precision. Effective power without the universal % multipliers for most armor is compared with most trait distributions is shown, along with the ability to make your own adjustments to anything (food, runes/sigils, traits, buffs, etc).

tl;dr — Soldier is a one-trick pony and thus has reached more of its potential than Knight, so it will gain less with traits and support from the party.

I’m not disagreeing, just saying he disregarded major input to simplify calculations.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

You can’t factor in runes and traits because we’re basically looking at pugs here. If you could control what they were running the whole soldier vs. knight thing would be irrelevant anyway cause you’d put them in zerker.

If you do want to look at exact numbers, though, let’s just look strictly at multipliers.

Full Exotic Knight: 210%
Full Exotic Soldier: 219.5%

Knight with 25 might: 321.7%
Soldier: 315.1%

Knight with fury: 227.6%
Soldier: 241.1%

Knight with might and fury: 348.7%
Soldier: 346%

Knight with banners/EA: 270.5%
Soldier: 268%

Knight with fury and banners/EA: 296.3%
Soldier: 297.6%

Knight with might, fury, and banners/EA: 428.3%
Soldier: 410.7%

Now obviously you can adjust those numbers however you like using consumables, traits, runes, etc. but those will vary wildly depending on the actual player. The takeaway though is that Knight’s generally benefits better from situations where you have comparatively more power and ferocity boosts and soldier’s is better when you are getting precision and crit chance boosts. I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone but as you can see from the multipliers above it’s actually quite close.

Incidentally Celestial actually scales better than either; it has a lower base damage but the lower power stat, lower precision stat, and presence of ferocity means it benefits the most from any given buff and with max buffs it actually has more damage than either knight or soldier.

You miss 1400 stats points because you disregarded traits. That’s quite a lot considering the difference between Knight’s and Soldier’s is miniscule.

Thaddeus.4891:

Ya I saw that escuse before. Its bullkitten. A S/X LH Elementalist can do 6 blast. With persisting flames that 60sec of fury. WAY more enough that you need before the next set of blast. In dungeon, with a LH persisting flames Elementalist you can end up with 1-2min of fury after some fight. And your party blasting, don’t restrict you of blasting yourself, making that even more of a bad reason, not to blast.

How do you end up with 2 minutes of fury? Do you use additional boon duration? The theoretical max I can get is 90 seconds.

Thaddeus.4891:

haviz.1340:

I’m clueless about lh rotations but even I wouldn’t use comet there.

Indeed you are clueless since several ppl use comet indeed. Its not a good dps, but that’s a blast. Since LH Elementalist are mainly about might stacking you can see how it’s important.

Bolded for emphasis.

You gave a solo video as an example (I guess) but I cannot see any evade of that attack. Are you sure it shows it?

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I get like 12k on an non-frostspotter LH spec, I’ll have to recheck the numbers. What is your rotation outside of LH specifically? DT > Flamewall > Phoenix > Comet?

I’m clueless about lh rotations but even I wouldn’t use comet there.

I believe that reverse defiance isn’t really different from what we currently have. The basic idea of the defiance system is that a team creates those windows of opportunity (by stripping stacks of defiance), not an enemy. It gives much more freedom.

There is however a major issue and that is a lack of incentive to actually CC a boss because there are no enrage attacks and most of the attacks goes on 4 seconds cooldown while interrupted (with a few exceptions). Currently, only reason people strip defiance stack is to use deep freeze to stun a boss for 5 seconds.

Otaur.9268:

I can agree with applying Defiance if CC is used at wrong times, yes. But the Life Siphon spell (without being interrupted prior) adds 29 stacks of Defiant immediately upon starting the siphon. With say 5 – 10 people fighting these 2 champions, you cannot break 30 stacks of defiant before it siphons all the life from those around and basically re-heals to full.

If you have 5-10 people participating then you only get 5-10 defiance stacks.

Dalanor.5387:

So the minimum would be 2 and 4 in a full party? Wouldn’t be that a bit unnecessary? Thieves can handle Defiant too well now, reducing the stack by only 1 makes things so much easier. But it’s just an opinion.

Right now you need to use 6 cc skills (after a previous cc) to interrupt a boss. That number should be 5 instead so even with full stack of defiance a team can interrupt crucial boss’ skill if every party member uses his cc skill.

As long as interrupted skills go on 4s cooldown (except few skills that go on full cooldown), what’s the incentive to interrupt? It’s much better to dodge/block than waste 6 skills. Only incentive right now is to use deep freeze and burst down the boss in 5 seconds.

Either there have to be attacks that need to be interrupted (like abomination but much more severe if you fail to do so) or mobs attacks have to go on longer cooldown. Plus, reducing defiance stacks by one would also be appreciated.

Ezeriel.9574:

The best defense in this game is pure offense, crits heal, crits steal health, crits proc vigor and damage effects…

besides all the talents and skills, we only have three sigils that don’t require a crit ;(

healing scales so poorly, what’s the point of it?

….

…..but mostly, this is how I see it:

Bunker dodges, dodges, and hits back for 700 damage
Zerker dodges, dodges, and hits back for 3000 damage

Bunker gets hit 5 times and dies
Zerker gets hit 3 times and dies

If a zerker can kill something before getting hit three times they win, and they almost always can.

A bunker would have hit their enemy four times to equal one attack from a zerker, therefore they have to survive four times as long, but they can only take two extra hits.

If it takes you four times as long to kill something, but you can only live twice as long, you’ve given up too much.

Bunkers have much better sustain than glass cannons. As a bunker you don’t just have more hp/defense.

Bezagron.7352:

But build swapping is already a time consuming chore, weapons, utility skills, traits, sigils, runes, infusions, armour & trinkets. Now I love build experimention but adding some more passive stats won’t change the chore of build swapping. The only real way to fix this is with build templates as there are so many components to builds already.

Regarding passive stats on gear the only real solution I see which would be extremely helpful are build templates and giving armour & trinkets the legendary item level with the passive stat swapping ability. This is one function I would love, but this would have major implications on item values and the TP.

Let’s assume I have wretched berserker gear with full dps build. If my team needs more sustain I can simply change traits, utility skills and weapons. Only aspects I’m worst at than fully built defensive character are lower survivability and worse healing efficiency. However, my boons are as strong as fully supportive character’s are. If I want to get more CC I do the same thing and I’m also as strong in this role as someone who use more defensive gear.

Changing weapons, utilities and traits are not time consuming, getting completely new gear is. Not only it’s time consuming, it’s also expensive.

As a warrior you can use hammer which makes only sense if you want to utilize more CC that has proper sigil (like paralyzation). I can swap signet of fury for fear me and signet of rage for warbanner. But I do not want to swap my armour (+runes) because it is kittening expensive.

Gw1 builds were not tied to the armour (only runes) because armour had virtually no stats except defense. Everything was tied to your skill bar and attribute points (here traits). It was much better system that allowed for quick and easy change.

Could you stop giving ideas that make swapping builds an expensive chore, especially after retraiting was made easier? Our non-perfect system can be improved by tying different playstyles to something that is easy to change, like traits. Not gear.

Bezagron.7352:

Group Content
Now talking group encounters full glass should need to rely on other party members to help them survive. In away I feel GW2 group encounters are too forgiving on group skill or interaction. The core game works and is great what it needs is to add more content for players that have now reached the upper skill level in GW2 but it would be nice if this upper skill level had room for other play styles.

Would full glass party, where players support each other, work in that ideal world?

Carighan.6758:

I definitely think defensive stats should play a larger role.

What we maybe need is for enemies to have a “filler” attack, much like we do. So that they’re always swinging at us, constantly. This puts a steady if small income of damage on the players, nearly unavoidable due to it’s sheer volume.

Now, for most players, this won’t change a thing. But if you run full glass, you suddenly need to be very good at your glass, or you’ll genuinely be downed before you know it if 4-5 enemies aggro. CC and down one by one if you run a train of glass players.

Or you mix in defensive stats.

I would also cut off the edges slightly (full-glass slightly less damage but slightly more tankiness, and vice versa). Then lower PvE health slightly~significantly depending on target.

What is your opinion about recently fixed scaling of Mai Trin? Surviving as a glass (especially as a thief or an ele) is now much harder and requires much more effort than it is with defensively traited/geared characters.

Purple Miku.7032:

It just so happens that an ele has access to all of these wonderful options without totally narfing their DPS (mace mainhand and shield on warrior are strictly defensive weapons and are quite awful for damage output). I’m quite certain that if played properly, an ele would be capable of killing this boss faster than a warrior. This is not the kind of boss that you can play offensively in an efficient manner.

By the way if it’s necessary, you have the option of traiting 4 into earth for reduced earth skill cooldowns for even faster access to projectile blocks + obsidian flesh.

Bolded for emphasis, those two sentences are exclusive. For good damage you need fresh air (dagger has ring of earth) and most likely persisting flames to get fury (2s on swap is not enough). Stone splinters are okay but you still put 4 trait points into offensively useless stats while losing somewhat mandatory traits for solo.

Purple Miku.7032:

I’m not sure why so many people are under the impression that warrior is the best for this boss solo. If I had more AR on my ele I’d be DYING to try this with D/F on level 50. ALL DEM PROJECTILE BLOCKS <3

Not to mention that hella nice cleave range with air auto.

Pretty much the only part that I’m sure would p*ss me off would be the cannon phase, seeing as you have to move like a freaking cheetah when solo to outrun those AoEs.

Indeed, it’s more about the barrage phase which destroys ele much faster than warrior, especially now. Almost 8k base hp more often means the difference between failure and success

I wonder how this will affect upcoming KING tournament.

Tree.3916:

Waypointing. Path banning.

Sounds casual as hell to me.

Arah Story was banned, wasn’t ’it? Personally, I only watched the end but I fell asleep during CoE Story. What was the reasoning for story modes anyway? They were designed by anet for one-time only adventure.

Don’t take me wrong. Neither me nor Weth have played “competitively” in pve for quite some time now and our feedback is strictly from a viewer perspective. No comeback rule is similar to what we have in pvp and viewers there also complain about the lack of possibility to recover making games extremely boring to watch after a certain amount of time has passed.

Retracted for now.

DennisChrDk.9823:

What was the idea behind wiping? What difference would that have made?

It’s a secret.

If you get back in time and other team will still be slower, you are faster than them, are you not? Who’s faster, a team that wiped few times but did a path in 10 minutes or fully defensive team that haven’t wiped but completed a path in 15 minutes? Also, the very initial plan for aetherpath record actually included deliberate wipe before the final boss.

frifox.5283:

Let the fully wiped team respawn. For each wipe the total completion time at the end is increased by 10% – 20% as a penalty.

I have to agree with Weth, wipe is already a punishment. No need to punish a team further. Even anet agrees on that, that’s why they removed repair costs.

Congratulations to SC though I missed those beautiful wipes.

Will it be saved? Haven’t watched but heard it was hell of a fun.

Harper.4173:

I believe the reason you don’t see more complex mechanics like “boon hate” or stuff like – " instead of applying this maybe I should strip that or do that to the enemy" is because GW2 is again designed so even the bad players can do alright in it.

How many players do you think would be able to understand and work around these complex combat mechanics when the Queen’s Pavilion has shown us they can’t even not zerg and listen properly.

So why are you asking for challenging content? How exactly would it be challenging when even bad players can do alright in it?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you lower the bar that much, that means pretty much anyone could go out and do these events. That’s not what Anet had in mind when they did Teq, and then the Great Wurm. They wanted an event that:

1) Catered to the 1% Hard core seeking crowds
2) Requires mass coordination and organization
3) Requires understanding of multiple mechanics in order to succeed

Plus, we all know what happens when you have wonky scaling issues. Bugs and glitches could have a World Boss scaled down for 5 people, with 150 people DPSing him. I would say allow scaling within a 80 to 90% range, and you’re able to prevent a boss from becoming too weak. So if a map can hold a max of 150 players, the lowest scaling would be 120 players. I take back my willingness to lower it to 100 or so players. That’s a bit too low, after thinking about it. And if you and your friends can’t pull those numbers, feel free to join in on one of our maps. Our only request is that you listen to the Commanders.

Pretty much anyone can go and do these events. Like anet said, they expect players to self-organize but that’s pretty much it. Those events are not hard and organized groups make them almost faceroll. I’m part of the group that kills teq and wurm on daily basis and the only requirement to join is to have consumables which wouldn’t even be needed if the requirements were more strict, like using proper dps builds instead of relying on broken consumables. Hardly “hardcore” unless you mean by that the effort of organising, not the difficulty itself.

Anet can design more of those events but only if they finally support it properly with game mechanics and optimise them. Until then, they should move their resources to instanced content which I’m pretty sure is more popular.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Some people seem to be misunderstanding who these Elite events are made for. This isn’t for the average player, but rather the highly organized groups that thrive on challenges. That’s not to say that we don’t allow pugs to join. In fact, a large portion of each raid is comprised of pugs. TTS is welcoming to anyone who wants to participate in these events. Sure the Megaserver mechanic makes this much harder, but we’ve managed to work with it as best we can.

As for talks about downscaling, I agree that there should be a slight update to this. I think having scaling to a minimum of 100 to 110 players on a 150 max player map is reasonable. Reducing it to 50 doesn’t make sense, since two of the three Wurms require 20 kegs/harpoons each to reach burn phases. Also, you don’t want scaling that low, because then you create Easy Mode.

Speaking on the issue of timers, players forget that the Marionette had timers. That event was good, no doubt about it. But remember that timers are necessary for all events. Without them, you could technically spend hours trying to win one event. That’s not fair to the players doing the event, and other players who want to do the event for themselves.

How making it scaleable to lesser amount of players would make it easy mode? The less people participate in an event, the more responsibility one has. Changing the amount of kegs/harpoons to be scaleable shouldn’t be an issue as well. Heck, with less people those events would be actually harder because you’d still need (or rather prefer to have) people blocking eggs and husks.

What is harder, world event in 5 people or in 50? Let’s also not forget that the vast majority of enemy attacks have a cap of 5 targets and it’s much easier to res fellow players with bigger zergs.

Harper.4173:

Where exactly has that happened?

Also – the game is stale because there’s been no new content in almost 2 years.
You bet most players are finding dungeons easy now, they’ve had 2 years to do them and get good at them. The content isn’t the issue. It’s the same it’s always been.

Changes won’t “fix” the content – they’ll just anger the player base.

If I have 7 dungeons – and 4 of them are farmable – do you think taking those 4 dungeons, changing them and making them harder will make the playerbase go " wow sure glad they made this dungeon harder – I was getting loot too easy here".

No – it will anger the players that feel they are being “driven out” and “forced to grind” because “Anet nerfs every farm”.
Do you remember how the players felt about CoF P1 being nerfed?

Players don’t like easy loot being taken away. And while you might complain on the forum that the combat is stale and that the game needs this and that I’m pretty sure for each and every one of us discussing this in this thread there are at least 4-5 players happily farming CoF and AC and enjoying the rewards. Because there’s nothing else enjoyable about the same content being played over and over for nearly 2 years.

The solution is for more content to be added – content that caters to hardcore players that want more challenge and more corresponding rewards.
I cannot stress enough how much rewards have to be factored in if the game is to have more challenging content because if the rewards aren’t there there’s no reason to not just do it once and never touch it again ( see Aetherblade path of TA).

Maybe my imaginable pugs are better than average ones then. Who knows. Anyway, you can achieve relatively high rate of faceroll if you play with either a lot of warriors/guardians or abuse fgs. PvE needs to start giving more attention to things like boon hate. For example, in ascalon fractal it’s more efficient to use perma protection and weakness (which you can get almost passively) than to strip or steal might stacks ascalonian monks give to other mobs. More active gameplay has less reward and efficiency and that shouldn’t be the case.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

There is maybe one profession in this game that is actually raw DPS and that is ele running staff. Everything else is varying degrees of support, control, or “tank”.

You forgot to add ‘if you camp fire attunement’, otherwise it’s fully-fledged support and control weapon.

Thaddeus.4891:

1) Because sPvP is not the same as PvE and WvW. The skill and stats don’t give you the same advantages and disadvantages.
2) Because Mobs and the path is predictable. Better AI would change that a bit, not not completely. Mobs even with better AI will still predictable, just more fun fight. It will take several decades before we can have unpredictable AI and will take even more decades before you can put that kind of AI into a games that can be played on commercial PC. But even there, the path of the dungeon is predictable, you can make your build accordingly because you know what is going to happen. In PvP, you don’t know. At one time you can be 3 on someone and you don’t need any defence, the other second you have 3 ppl on you and you need as much defence as possible to survive and keep the point while your team come to help you.
3) In WvW, there is just too much going on at the same time to keep track of everything. At some point, you will see that there is 4 Necro wells under your feet and if you don’t have enough defence to survive that peak of dmg, then you’ll be dead.

PvP is not ’’harder’’ than PvE. Its unpredictable. And the only reason to bring passive defense is unpredictability.

Oh you can put that into PvE. But that doesn’t mean that it will be a good game. Right now the technology don’t allow us to do much real unpredictability. Mobs need to be overpower, hit so fast that you can’t react, have random trap that can kill you, or kitten like that to make PvE ’’unpredictable’’. It can be nice in some game, but most of the time, that just kitten people off. That kind of game are usually not main stream and are only a niche market (rogue like, etc).

So harder PvE would be nice, but would not make it unpredictable. So you would still be better with active defence.

Unpredictable means you have to adapt. For me, that means it’s harder and even if you are the best dueler or teamfighter you still need to know how to rotate. PvE is completely linear in comparison.

Mobs check their scripts about every 2 second. Compare a player playing a thief with novices in cliffside fractal. The difference is night and day. One black powder is enough to stop 100% damage.

Active defense are main counters against mythical one-shots. Mobs should pressure you more steadily and should be less vulnerable to burst to avoid brute forcing through the content.

The game is really stale when even average pugs caught up with speedclear guilds. Changes are definitely needed.

Thaddeus.4891:

It doesn’t change really the game. I would like to see more hard content. But you know what would happen? They wouldn’t change their build, or just a little bit. There would be more hammer guardian for protection, there would be more skale venom for weakness, you could see more blind, more aegis, more reflect, etc. That would be the kind of support that you would see more. But ppl would still be whining because the game is still dps oriented, zerker is still the best gear, toughness/vitality/healing is still kitten, etc.

The game being harder, mean more active defense, more damage mitigation, more support. But not the same thing of support and defense that the ppl whining want. They just want to play with their soldier and knight gear or bring their healing profession because that’s the kind of ppl that want to be part of the high end gameplay, while have a high survivability because they die too easy.

Why do you fight completely different in pvp then?

maha.7902:

Yes. Next?

One dimensional thinking. Greatsword autoattack applies vulnerability which means it’s also support. It’s really troublesome to define something that’s not support then. By definition, being supportive means to be actively concerned for the success of your own team.

Fractals of the Mists. You can still solo/duo some of them despite the HP and damage being throttled up at higher levels.

That’s why people have done scale 80 with no changes to their playstyle and builds? Like every single boss in fractals was soloed.

maha.7902:

sigh.

passive, party-wide modifiers.

I have 5 potions I send to 4 other party members. Support?

People want defensive support to be used more commonly. That means the game has to be much harder and less solo-able. It should require from your team to support you so the lone person is no longer able to complete the group content. Make mobs strong enough that you need defensive support and resilient enough that you can’t just burst them.

Passive modifiers are now support? You seem to jest. I guess food and potions are also support.

maha.7902:

thats because almost everyone in this game is completely ignorant on how the combat works and gets carried by the one competent player in the party while they sit there mashing keys hoping everything dies

and then when told that there’s more to combat than “just dps” they attribute support to “doing more dps” which is exactly what applies in trinity games (tank holds aggro so ppl can do more dps), or they say "well thats not depth its just uninteresting (a.k.a they dislike it)

this will go around in circles

and neither side will agree

my tip is

if you dislike the combat, stop playing the game

if you like it, carry on

They aren’t exactly ignorant. You can complete a large portion of the content with full warriors team that bring nothing except dps since fgj and banners are not support. Heck, you can solo “end-game” arah p2 with nothing except dps. So how’s that not “just dps”?

This game could really use some changes, like increasing pressure on players so they actually have to think about survivability and a teamwork that could come with it. Even condition pressure or increased cc from enemy side could be nice addition.

Conclusion: mobs need to be more diverse and less vulnerable to burst.

^ And that’s why I always play warrior when I go solo. Lowest risk, highest reward. Unless reflects are involved, that is.

Why ‘even’? Easiest way to make projectiles unreflectable, and that’s how anet was always doing, is to make them unblockable.

Too intense healing?

kitten dragon.1804:

This discussion got really weird if you only read the first page and then the last. However, in the off chance that someone of influence reads this I second the opinion that some of us players are still waiting for “end game”. I really, really enjoy GW2, every part of it is great with the exception of it’s dramatic departure from the trinity mechanics. I’m an old school DND fan, and I like my warriors to take a hit, my mages to be glass cannons and my priests to only care about healing you. It’s familiar and lets face it, it has replay-ability.

So please, if anyone who can make a difference happens to read through, or even if the community agrees. Show us a uniquely GW2 version of the trinity and the somewhat predictable/entertaining! content that accompanies it.

How so?

Dual.8953:

I’ve got a thought on why things are they way they are. GW2 needs desparately for there to be a hard mode. And it needs to be so hard that Zerker parties will be virtually impossible.
This game is too easy, it’s easy to the point that the elite players in this game have to find ways to severely handcap themselves just too challege themselves.
The reason for that is the game was designed so that full glass cannon parties can be viable.
That considered, hardmode needs to be designed to counter the meta. Enemies need to be hard enough and fast enough that a glass cannon will be at high risk if they melee. They need to not fall for simple tactics like stacking. These dungeons need to operate outside the boundaries that the current dungeons limit themselves to.
The reason why it should be virtually impossible to do in a glass cannon build is because as long as a dungeon is so easy that any team comp works, it can not be truely challenging.
The reason this should exist is there’s a hardcore audience in this game and they are currently not being catered to in any noticable way. They’ve reached the top level of skill this game for asks and now struggle to find ways to squeeze more challenge out of the game.
The reason hard mode needs to be very harsh on the damage meta is, the damage meta forms when the player base has completely mastered the given content. It is the pinnacle of player development. If the content has been mastered to the point that damage meta can exist, the players of that content have nothing more to strive for and the content stagnates. As long as the content is balanced so that glass cannon parties are viable, the content is unable to be truely difficult.
The existence of this content, which defies the game’s current design philisophy, should be permissable because the rest of PvE has already been designed to cater to be playable by everyone. Hardmode is to be a haven for the hardcore players to stretch their legs and push themselves to the limit, which is an experience the main game cannot provide.

So full zerker is now impossible, I swap from it to pvt and now I can complete a content. What has changed for me except that I have to spend money on another set of gear?

Dual.8953:

Game doesn’t need to force everyone to play a certain way, but it does need content where glass cannons are not optimal. They could still do it but they’ll either be wiped a lot or have to take it slow.
Why should these be allowed to exist? Because they’d be niche encounter for those who value finesse over brute forcing. It wouldn’t be the whole game, but it would be a place for players who prefer techinque over force to thrive. It wouldn’t matter if it’s unfair to the damage focused player. They have all the rest of PvE to play in.

You have it, it’s called Tequatl where glass cannon is not optimal and pvt is.

Tommyknocker.6089:

I disagree on the dodging, as the only things I have seen dodging are the bandits in Queensdale. IIRC almost everything dodged in the beginning but as it has been so long now I will concede that point.

As for them avoiding the AOE’s, if they cannot cripple, stun, chill or immobilize the mobs before they can move out of an incoming AOE then they would indeed be a poor ele.

Everything was dodging because you fought only bandits in the beta. For AoE, consider this: you can put permanent lava font at your own feet, now every melee mob (most of the mobs attack in melee range) won’t ever hit you because as soon as they get to your position, they will run away. Moving out of every AoE isn’t exactly smart when mobs have just few attacks and those are melee ones.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Well at least in the beta weekends the mobs dodged and moved out the way of some AOE’s. I’ll take that back if not anything else.

They were dodging as much as now but yes, they were moving out of AoEs. Poor eles couldn’t hit anything.

Dual.8953:

Why not go share said build on the dungeon forum asking for a critique?

I make my own builds and I know they are decent enough, after all my team completes the content smoothly and swiftly.

Besides, last time I did share my own build (codenamed spiritual searing druid) with the montage of its superiority it didn’t end well for me. Suffice it to say, I learnt my lesson. Well, dungeon subforum feedback was actually extremely positive, it was guardian subforum that made me sceptical when it comes to sharing.

Tommyknocker.6089:

I doubt it, but seeing as this is suppose to be the MMO for those that wanted something different, I was hoping for more.

It does things differently but if you were hoping for impossible you were lost from the beginning.

Iris Ng.9845:

I remember [SC] did a CM path with 3 eles; one of them (Nat) was running the elusive 0/4/5/5/0 build. They was able to get a sub 3-minute with an excellent execution.

For our Lupi speedkills we were using 0/5/5/4/0 for vulnerability generation so it really depends how many boons can you generate and how good is your vulnerability generation.

Dual.8953:

Then get kicked for not bringing banners, just like they’d kick a venom Thief for not being a dps/stealth thief.

What? Just yesterday I played fully traited venom thief with an awesome epidemic necro and mobs had like 20-25 stacks of torment all day. So much dps was going around it was unimaginable.