You know what is even more boring than running easy dungeon paths for gold? following the zerg in SW. I can stand like 5 minutes of that insanely easy and dumb content before i have to log off out of disgust. I hold little hope in the new zones after the beta weekends too, its just more of the same map zerging content, very little challenge, and as things get figured out will be even more trivial than running CoF. TBH, i wouldn’t have put my preorder in if they had lead with the news that has been coming out recently.
I think one of the things that helped me most in terms of dungeon running is being told to turn off melee assist and the box that makes you auto attack things you get close to. It helps immensely in running past mobs since you won’t be body blocked or in combat speed debuffed.
As for the stability, you don’t actually need it if you can dodge. The attacks are slow and telegraphed and its requires some serious bad luck to get chain juggled (like being hit by all of the back aggro attacks by following at the wrong pace behind the vanguard player).
Just make sure to bring a build that has good power. There are a fair number of object destroying events in AC, conditions and crits do nothing for that so condition builds and precision builds that don’t have power are not very good (in general as well as for AC). For learning dungeons I recommend guardian because it gives you the largest number of survival skills, above average dps, and situation specific utilities (like group stability/aegis/reflects). Get as close to the meta dps build that you can get with your current play skill. Its better to die occasionally while being useful than to run with a build that is useless but never dies.
When I switch away from my usual mesmer or guardian in some dungeons the entire group seems to have worse runs. It goes from being able to get smooth pug runs 9/10 times to 1/10 times. This is despite having guardians and mesmers in the party that should be able to do the things that they are supposed to do. (quite often I find that you have to tell people to bring reflects in basic 101 level stuff like CM and SE1). One of the reason why I stopped playing my warrior is I didn’t have as much control on critical skills. I can keep myself up as a warrior just fine, but the party tends to just fall down if I’m not the one doing the reflects/aegis/stability/cleanse, and its much easier to do this as a mesmer or guardian.
I can still get pugs to run well on ele, but lacking the reflect support means that in dungeons that have lots of projectiles there are still problems. As a thief I can get through just fine with blinds and stealth, but once again, there are issues that I can’t help parties through that my mes and guardian just carry parties through.
All this means is that If I’m pugging I need to run mesmer or guardian to get smooth runs. If I’m running with people I know, I try to run my other 3 good classes (I have a necro at 80 but nobody wants me to run that like ever). Even then I’m usually asked to run guard or mesmer because I’m reliable with those and the other players prefer to play with their wars/eles/rangers/theifs.
As for the topic: Mob spikes don’t happen if aegis/protection/area blinds are properly being used. You probably had a group that was failing to apply proper damage mitigation skills due to lack of group orientated skill use. Probably a party of signet wielding/meditation build ect instead of banner buffing virtue using ect players.
ProtoGunner, you only have to kill the second monster in path 2, the first one can be skipped as it doesn’t restrict gate access like the first one does.
The only think I can think of when i do HotW paths (all 3) is that the only reason why the bosses have so many HP is for time gating purposes. I mean most of the dungeon can be skipped and if they had HP pools similar to even arah the paths would all be done in 5 minutes by even non FGS rushing groups.
I solo all events for CoE opening on a regular basis (with guard, mes, and ele), and have duoed CoF with war, mes, guard. Yeah, it takes some time to do, but the mobs for CoF drop a decent amount of bags (last time i did it i got 20ish) and you can get a champ bag too if you manage to actually kill the effigy (you don’t need to, the trash is what really makes the event fail).
CoE is so easy solo its not even funny. I did it with a level 75 full glass build ele wearing blues once even. The pre events are trivial, and the final boss hits very softly with obvious tells. Heck he even has a reflectable attack (the big AoEs he sends out) that hurt can him pretty bad. You can even die and run back from the WP currently and he probably won’t reset. If you get in trouble you can always jump into the water and swim away from the fish. You don’t get as much for doing this, but you are for sure getting a champ bag for your efforts (and lots of karma for doing all the pres if you still need to earn that).
I don’t have a problem with the underwater combat actually. I do have a problem with the general HotW boss HP total issue that is present in all paths. They have way to many HP and its not like they really do anything challenging enough or phases that would require having so many HP. Take away the punching bag boss fights that never end and the paths really aren’t any more challenging or much longer than others. Hell most of them can be skipped including all of the undewater trashmobs.
They still need gold sinks in the game. The gold inflation is still pretty severe.
I pugged SE p1 with 4 eles and a mesmer last night. Light class or get kicked lol. Seriously though even with 3 of the eles being celestial (me being zerk) we cleared it faster than the all heavy group i did it with my guardian the day before: another guard (who was a staff camping soldier/cleric hybrid who couldn’t be bothered to respec for pve) and 3 wars (only 1 smart enough to bring any banners).
With 2 groups mostly consisting of bad builds (its a pug, to be expected) the light classes actually had superior dps and utility.
Elitism. People follow the meta so blindly, they even enforce it on everyone when it doesn’t really matter.
If it was some organized, record-breaking speedrun you were going for, it would be perfectly logical that your team would require you to use the most effective Elite. However, I really doubt that using HoB was that tragic in your situation. And furthermore, kicking you immediately is absolutely unacceptable. They could have just asked you to change it, if they just really wanted you to use something else to feed their moronic sense of elitism.
Can’t let standards slide. If we tolerate the knights players too much, what happens then? We let the valks in? Before long we have fear spam minion master necros and cleric guardians running around with their staffs healing and supporting the bearbow trap ranger. No thief stealth skips because that’s an exploit.
Oh wait, I already get that garbage in my normal pug runs…
I have no problems with people just wanting to play the game with others who know that the pants go over the legs and not on the head.
Too bad this will encourage other builds while the PVT-ranged-campers will keep the delusion that they are saving the team and not the reason the others are downed in the first place..
that quote just makes you sound like an elitists
There is nothing “elitist” to wanting to play the game as it is rather than how you want it to be. Making up fake rules of play that don’t actually translate to the actual mechanics of the game however do make one a “scrub”. Also PTV is a selfish playstyle because you give up things that could help the party (doing your share of damage) for the quality of life things such as not needing to dodge or clear conditions quickly.
I was laughing my butt off on the Shiro comparison. Shiro was a chump that could be soloed. In fact he even killed himself if you were playing the right skills, almost no challenge ect. Now if you tried to do it “legit” you got punished by party members being exiled and replaced with mobs, his overpowered attack that he spammed when he was worn down, and the general bs that his skill rotation included.
As for the topic: nothing wrong with zerker gear. Its a full dps set meant for advanced players. A newly minted level 80 is going to struggle in dungeons with zerk if they think they can just join a group and stand in the corning spamming skills on cooldown. Once you know what to do and how to avoid damage, why would you waste time on useless excess vitality and toughness?
Another comparison to GW1, while that game technically had a trinity, a common speed clearing tactic was to ball up the mobs, often using body blocks, then spiking the best damage rotation to wipe the entire group. Sounds like using LoS corners and zerk skill rotations to me. Hell its even harder to do that in GW2 since there is a limit to how many enemies your skills can affect (cleave and AoE target limit).
That’s not dumbing down the game, that’s adding crucial feedback for the player.
All the crucial feedback you need is the dirt-nap that your character takes after not being protected or not dodging. I’m pretty spoiled though, being mostly on guard and mes. I can just invul/aegis my way through problems. Oh, aegis broke, better renew it.
My daily dungeon run is: AC1&3, CM 1&3, TAup, SE 1&3, CoF 1, HotW1. That is all I have time for and sometimes I leave out a couple in there. AC and CM 1 can be kitten pugs for some bizarre reason. The rest are pure cakewalks that can be done all in 10-15 minutes by the average pug.
I do those paths because that is what I can count on an average pug being able to do in one try. TA forward has a skip that can be kitten some players (and other will try to use the JP to bypass it). CoF2 has bugged out on me to many times to have it on my rotation and to be honest I’m sick to death of COF and don’t even run 1 as much anymore. COE are all easy, but I can’t trust pugs. If you have a guild group its really easy.
And for Kholer. The problem is not the encounter or his position. The only problem with Kholer is the reward he give. He give kitten, so most people, even those who can kill it, will skip it.
In other words, his difficulty is not equal to the reward. Which means his difficulty should either be changed, or he should simply be moved to a different location.
Look, you can’t really keep dodging the issue: More people die to Kholer than any other boss in the dungeon. And Kholer is right at the middle of the dungeon. How does that make sense?
He’s in the wrong spot, clear and simple. I’m not saying AC can’t have a boss as “challenging” (in massive air quotes) as Kholer, but he’s not in the right location, and he gives a poor reward on top of that.
I can’t even remember the last time a random pug group I was in actually bothered to fight Kholer. Hell the new to dungeons player at level 43 just followed the group past him (path 3). Path 1 you don’t even need to cut through, you can go around like he isn’t even there.
The good groups I’ve been in are about 25/75 on killing him. He is worth a champ bag, so with the right group you just stack and slap for 20 seconds and get your bag just like the FG train farmers. He is a pointless fight if you don’t value the random trash bags that champs drop. Yipee a bag of blue/green stuff and a couple of silver. Put in karma vials and I’ll fight him.
As for more people dying to kholer… Well lets count bosses: Spider, Kholer, Troll, final. Yeah, I see more wipes at spider than Kholer. Hell I see more deaths trying to run the last bit of path 1 than I see at Kholer.
The game has enough hand holding, we don’t need even more stuff like tool tips telling you that things don’t work when somebody should be able to use basic reasoning skills and googlekittento find the solutions to such easy problems. L2Play and L2Search are legit suggestions and not condescending as people who receive such advice like to complain.
I always laugh at people who complain about armor repair builds. Its like 12 silver or similar. Pocket change. I call my repair bills idiot taxes, I have to pay when I’m an idiot.
AC is easy, even clerics can take out the burrows. If a pug is doing badly at the burrows because of dps its because they are either condition builds (as in bad) or a set that is somehow not condition and not power (also known at grade A suck). That right there means the encounter is a good training for players: Conditions suck and you should have power in your build.
Engie can replace the ele for might stacking and the thief for stealth if needed.
so you want to replace best dps in game for mediocre engi? …
bla bla bla
engi? dps? instead of ele/thief? ahahaahaha. why engi or not for examaple necro? power necro is good as engi. ahahaah. i dont want to argue about that. YMMD, ty.
If you need might stacking and don’t have an ele: Bam an engie can fill in. If you need thief stealth: Bam, and engie can fill in. Is it ideal? no, nowhere did I say it was. I also never said it was best dps, if you are missing the ele obv you are.
Hell in a group missing both an ele AND a thief an engie is probably what you want. esp compared to just stacking more wars and guards which is what most pugs do.
Engie can replace the ele for might stacking and the thief for stealth if needed.
so you want to replace best dps in game for mediocre engi? …
Try reading before coming off like an idiot. Engies CAN replace the ele or thief IF needed. As in you are missing either one, engie is flexible enough to fill the role. They can even fill both roles if you don’t have either. In an ideal run you don’t need the engie (well its actually wanted in underwater HotW paths to make the final boss take less time).
My “ideal” group is:
Ele(dps and might stacking)
Guardian(reflect/aegis/blinds)
War(banner holders)
Ranger(spotter/frost spirit)
Thief(more blinds, dps,skipping)
Mesmer can replace the guardian for reflects, and the thief for stealth/skipping if needed. Engie can replace the ele for might stacking and the thief for stealth if needed. (and yes that means a good engie or mesmer can fix big holes in class comp)
My point is that rangers provide a group wide dps increase that can’t be replaced by other classes. You don’t lose much by not having one, but when it comes down to it you are usually better off with a good ranger than just having redundant wars or guardians.
I feel like I’m arguing with Fox News here. Never mind then, carry on.
It may be that you are actually fox news.
/forumception O_O
This forum is like Fox News, the GW2 subreddit is like CNN, and I’m the guy just sitting on his couch wondering where the kitten the real news is.
I was under the impression that more people visited the reddit than the official site. Is this not the case? I say this because nobody actually watches/reads CNN anymore. There are shows on Fox that have more viewership than entire days of CNN. MSNBC has more eyeballs than CNN and its even more slanted and partisan than Fox is. As for real news, well you have to go to primary sources, something that no news channel does anymore (they just repost somebody elses story with almost no fact checking anymore).
As for BBC, has been called “britain broadcasting communism” or “Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation” despite being state run media is hardly an unbiased network, though at least it follows the forms of being impartial which is something that US news companies have long ago abandoned (Fox despite its well known right slant actually gives more time to opposing views than their competitors and has actual heavyweights on the opposition talk instead of weak waffling guys their competitors show).
I would say this forum is more like GW2general in /vg/. militant fluff bunny rps vs hardcore tryhards vs people who just want to speed run with a good group.
(edited by notabot.3497)
But whatever, its not like you will stop drinking the “play how I want” Flavor Aid (which is what was actually used in the event that started the meme".
You too are playing “how you want”-even if that is “meta” builds. What gives you the right to look down on others for doing the same?
Everybody should play how they want, including elitists, classists, etc. But you have no right to look down on others as “terrible” for doing so. Be happy playing your “superior” builds and leave others alone.
Calling others terrible for gear choice, etc. is just a silly way of stating how “superior” you feel you are in comparison. It’s not about “improving the community’s (pugs) gameplay” but more about thinking too highly of yourself for belonging to the “high skill” niche of players in the game.
Everyone has the right to enjoy GW2, not only math min/maxers. Ultimately, in GW2 stats matter, but not as much as someone’s playstyle and skill, and it is 100% certain that not all players should use whatever is considered the “optimal” build and gear for this or that Profession.
While optimal isn’t required by any means, I in fact gave several good alternatives that serve the same purpose as celestial…. Such as knights and/or valk. Deliberately being an advocate for a bad set for group content inflicts bad decision making on other people. Its only courteous to think about your fellow party member, and its not unreasonable to expect the same from others. Of course the “I do what I want, none of your business” generation is going to rally around selfish builds that under contribute because they don’t feel they should be forced to do anything like read, do math, or be a decent player before joining group content with random strangers.
As for me being superior? No, i eat floor on occasion, don’t’ like doing fractals because its not fun for me, and don’t really like WvW because I don’t enjoy mass combat and don’t have a consistent raiding group. In fact I would like to say my skill level is average, but that means half of the player base is worse than I am. Which is fine, but there is a vast gulf between the average dungeon runner/LS casual (myself) who just wants a smooth run and the average pugger who thinks that wvw gear and pve gear are interchangeable, that they don’t need to respec their traits between game modes, and who thinks being average at everything (at best) is an advantage when doing specialized content.
I don’t like to see bad advice spread, but the forums have turned into a hug box of bad advice being good, and good advice being “elitist jerks” that want to enforce blah blah blah… Is it too much to ask for people to at least know their class, have a build that is within spitting distance of decent, and have a gear set that is actually relevant to the instance being run? Apparently it is, I see that everything somebody even has a moderate viewpoint such as “wear tanky gear in wvw, don’t bother with it in pve, 2 good sets is better than 1 decent in one area, and terrible in another” is shouted down and worse.
Also, if you want to play a random or weird build of suboptimal gear and traits, you don’t have to go to the forums to do so. You can just play the build in your own fashion, but for the love of the game don’t encourage people to run questionable builds in group content with strangers.
One of the randomness of pugging is people run crappy for dungeons stat sets like celestial. By building expecting that pugs will be horrible you are contributing to the problem.
I don’t regard people playing builds they like and are comfortable with as a problem. You’re perspective isn’t universal, therefore I don’t feel I’m contributing to something negative.
Consensus building is stupid. I don’t care if you think you are contributing a popularly held belief, its still wrong and you can’t fix the math by saying otherwise. By spreading a popularly held misconception you are contributing to misinformation, which is one of the reasons why pugs are so bad.
If you want more survival in dungeons, there are better sets that don’t give up as much damage and still provide the stats that you need. A well thought out blend of valk/knights/zerker will provide more than enough protection without giving up as much damage. The other stats that celestial provides are crap and you won’t miss them.
In WvW its similar, with the caveat that a piece or two of celestial CAN actually be the perfect solution to a particular build problem.
I tend to play the generic pX dungeon Y groups. My expectation is that the run is done by people who know the basics of clearing quickly it without wipes. Which means stacking, LoSing, and skipping. I don’t expect the meta build, but it should be reasonable, I’m not class elitist, I know that all classes can be at least acceptable as long as the player can put one foot down each pant leg and not try to wear them on their head instead.
The play how you want players? 90 percent of them found in pugs can’t manage to figure out the basics of their class, defend crap weapon/builds with their dying breath, and blame zerkers for why the party failed when they are the ones spamming light fields blocking might stacks, and doing less damage than a summoning consumable (or mesmer clone…) I tolerate them because I’m not expecting a speed run, but they are sure as hell resented for leaching. I just want a reasonably fast in and out run with no fusses. Whenever you get a bearbow, staff guard, GS mesmer, healshout war, or conditions anything though…. Yeah, long boring run with more trouble than its worth idiots not doing things in the regular fashion, and not communicating their intent to kite and use knockbacks/fears. Seriously, get good, play the game for what it is, and not what you want it to be. Game became way more fun for me when I gave up trying to force it into something its not.
(edited by notabot.3497)
Yes, you’re discouraging people playing a certain way to save them the heartache of being kicked from groups. How kind ><
People who play that way get kicked because its an ineffective style of play. So yes, its more kind that telling them a kitten is actually a diamond.
Too bad the “satisfaction from playing on his own terms” he derives is from false information.
Does it matter? If he’s happy playing, it’s really not relevant where it originates from. People figure out what they like pretty quick .
You’re talking to brick walls m8. The toxicity of this forum is well preserved. It’s meta or nothing.
I think its more of we are trying to avoid incoming: “Getting kicked from groups, wth is up with these exploiters/stackers/skippers?” threads in the dungeon forum. Tanking isn’t a “thing” in GW2 because of how the aggro mechanic works. You don’t need much passive damage mitigation because the active ones are so powerful and the opportunity cost to be “tanky” is too high. Also there is no real challenge in facetanking compared to needing flawless execution (despite idiot claims to the contrary, running zerk leaves very little margin for error compared to cleric/soldiers/ect). If you can’t run full zerk, run knights or valk, its a good starter set. Good enough for mistakes damage mitigation with very small sacrifice in damage potential
Hi mister.
Well i play an engineer and i dont find my char THAT bad.. but i have a warrior and he’s 5 times better in fotm.
Just plz watch the descripton for each party .. 80% shows “Warrior, guard, mesmer zerg group”
I mean, why get an engineer’s dmg when u can get a warrior’s dmg which is higher? why get an engineers healing while ele’s healing are better?
Warriors offers the best dmg output
Guardians offers the best dmg reduction
Eles offers the best healingIt’s simple really..
Would u like x2 necros and 1 ranger in your group? if they are decent players?
Well since you don’t know the difference between zerk/zerg, think that wars give the best damage, expect that eles are healers, and don’t understand that rangers are actually desired in many groups (and necro has some fractal specific uses) I don’t really see how any part of your opinion is an informed one, especially since you think its “simple really”
I won’t normally kick engies from my runs (I do kick bow rangers, staff guards, GS mesmers, ect) because in my experience most engies are pretty scary good at their class at this point (the few that still actively play them that is), but this post might make me revise my opinion.
What is NICE about celestial is that it’s very applicable to WvW and can be for PVE as well, due to the randomness of PUGing (if you do that). I think you have the right approach … Set your armor, make adjustments swapping trinkets and weapons. That’s the cheapest route IMO as well.
One of the randomness of pugging is people run crappy for dungeons stat sets like celestial. By building expecting that pugs will be horrible you are contributing to the problem. The gear set gives mediocre stats across the board, but the problem is mediocre is crap… its the same thing as being bad at everything instead of being amazing at what you are trying to achieve while giving up as your weakness things that don’t matter.
In WvW celestial across the board doesn’t really achieve anything you want/need either, but its ok to mix in a few pieces because it can sometimes fill stat holes that more specialized armors have. BUT that sort of micro tuning is an art form based on the skill of the player, the traits they are using, and what is trying to be achieved, not something that randoms on the internet are going to be able to give effective advice on.
I’m the one that keeps your squishy pure dps class alive.
Dodging, blocks and blinds keep my squishy dps class alive while I see a cascade of numbers. You make it take longer for me to complete content.
Maybe, but his motivation to play isn’t to make you complete content faster, it’s for him to get his own satisfaction from playing on his own terms. It’s great when those two things align but they don’t have to.
I hate the “I play how I want” answer in regards to group content. On both sides to be honest, but I tend to side with the zerkers because that actually requires more skill than having high healing power/toughness and using gear/trait based passive defense (that and its horribly ineffective/inefficient to facetank at the expensive of damage). I don’t need the “healers” contribution at all and if they are receiving satisfaction from “healing” the 5% damage that I’ve taken (usually from enemy retaliation or some piddling condition) they are being both an idiot and worthless. My active healing on both of my main classes heals almost half of my health with 0-50 healing power, and since I don’t actually need healing I use them as blocks (shelter and mirror) more often than not. I only use mirror in some fights because on mesmer I traited for more damage with mantras prepared, and I get through most fights without even popping it once.
A group with people who know how to play (and the game has been out for a year and a half, there is not excuse other than laziness for most people) doesn’t need anybody holding their hand with heals.
That being said I hear its possible to /dance in the aoe of many “pug stomper” fights if you go full defensive (I once stood in the whirl of Butcher in HotW when I specced my guardian for full tank green rarity just to show it could be done, though I didn’t actually /dance, I used some healing), so if you have no problem roleplaying that you are playing WoW go ahead and spec a healer cleric or unkillable tank and use your skills on cooldown while having the hunter kite the boss around.
I heard that high toughness draws aggro, is that true? I don’t want to make my ele a high-priority target…
It can draw aggro depending on the fight and the RNG and proximity. Other factors are also part of it (like ressing a player is a huge weighted aggro draw). If you build for survival you will often (but not always!)grab initial aggro, but you will quickly lose it because you aren’t doing any damage. A build with much more than token defense will do very poor damage so you aren’t likely to hold aggro unless you are doing the FGS rush trick or know how to get the most out of might stacking or use LH.
So…. If you go with knights/valk (not bad for learning your class/rotations) or god forbid celestial (which is crap despite its many defenders, and is going to be hit hard by the incoming crit damage nerf).
Now if you are playing wvw none of my advice really matters, as you will be in the safe hug box of the zerg and don’t need to do anything other than provide token damage and not die. Yeah, its more complex than that but survival is the key thing about wvw zergs (so you don’t provide rally targets if nothing else) and you wouldn’t be asking these sorts of questions. Dying in open world/LS events doesn’t actually matter. In LS just leach for bags like everybody else does and practice your dodges to avoid being bored or losing skill (I don’t do LS on my guard or mesmer because I don’t want to get into bad habits with my best classes).
It would be more fun than the LS 200+ zerg fests that still fail more often than not that we have now.
That’s just anet’s inability to scale content properly to the number of players. It’s actually kind of surprising at this point that the scaling isn’t better. The last 10 LS updates have all been mass zerg events. You would think they would have it down by now.
The problem with scaling is that the system is built to handle groups of 5. Boons and stuff only affects 5 targets, so you can’t really do much in fights other than spam good skills and hope the people receiving them make good use of them. Another problem is that its so chaotic and the average PVE LS farmer is terrible, as in a monkey flinging poo at the keyboard is more qualified to play the game. If they make it so that any old idiot can clear the content it because too easy and becomes a farming event (like the old WB fights used to be). They make them hard (like Teq, karka queen to a lesser extent, and the wurm boss) and it just doesn’t get done outside of organized groups or WB tours after reset (and even then they don’t do teq or wurm). The issue is that as soon as a group capable of clearing those events gets started a train of cleric or worse event leachers into the event scaling it up without contributing anything of value. Teq is pretty much done on overflows only now to prevent open world leaches messing things up, and I suspect the same is true of wurm (I never bothered more than a couple times with that event).
Another example is the original temple of grenth event, it was pretty easy but as soon as somebody called out the event on map chat a ton of idiots would show up and pull shades onto the npc and cause it to fail. Then people realized you could farm it by making it fail on purpose. The nerf was to make the event even “harder”… Yeah, I soloed the risen priest of that from 100% to 20% before a couple of people showed up to help finish it. Wasn’t hard at all. Next time I tried to solo it, but somebody called in mapchat and suddenly 50 people were there, the event scaled up, and failed in 20 seconds due to idiots standing on the stairs pulling shades. It actually gets done pretty frequently now by larger groups because the bads have stopped farming Orr and moved onto the LS, FG, and QD trains.
I would really like to have 10-15 man organized groups, fights similar to how the temple fights are really meant to be done (instead of100+ zergs trying to overpopulate the scaling cap, or a handful of people who do the events late at night to avoid the primetime scrub scaling). If done similar to vizunah square it would play similar to the temple of balth event. Multiple groups doing their chain, then meeting up for a final push on the end boss. Hell Arah would have been perfect for this sort of content from a fluff perspective.
Anyways I’m probably just wishlisting, but if they ever get around to giving up more elder dragons or more zones/dungeons open up for us, I would really like at least one group event that is instanced instead of open world. While I can’t really go back to playing GW1, I just get the feeling that there was more worthwhile things to do at any one time in that game than this one.
It would be more fun than the LS 200+ zerg fests that still fail more often than not that we have now.
Good WvW and PVE builds aren’t the same thing, trying to have a set be good at both means you will have a set that is actually fairly terrible at either one, or both.
As a guardian you don’t need any defensive stats for pve at all. Not dungeons, not open world, not temple/wb events, and certainly not LS BS. In terms of your current build, it has 1/4 the offense a good pve build has and about twice the effect health that a guard needs (your healing power is 526 points higher than the pve meta build for instance)
I can’t really comment on your builds wvw ability, as I mostly small group/roam and as such have much higher offensive stats than a zerg build.
The attack value stat that shows up in game and on that editor isn’t a real measure of offense. There is another editor that shows the effective offensive ability much better. Your damage is a quite a bit below par, even for a necro. Your trait choices are fairly terrible. Your wells aren’t really wanted due to protection not being required for regular dungeons or low/mid fractals, and they are annoying dark fields.
“balanced” build is another way of saying party load as far as I’m concerned.
You don’t need high life or armor if you are any good. I’m not any good with necro (its my 5th character in terms of play time) but I can stay up in full dps meta. They have plenty of survival built into them as is. Since necros are correctly understood to be underwhelming for dungeons, you need to be good and max damage to even equal to the average pug zerker.
I completely understand why groups kick necro players, as most are like most ranger players: Fairly horrible and don’t know their class/refuse to play in a way that works for group play. I personally won’t kick somebody for being necro, or second a kick vote. But I won’t complain or have issue if somebody else does it. Because unlike a good ranger who is correctly traited (spotter+frost spirit, melee weapons, and dps pets), the same thing on necro still doesn’t provide anything in particular that another class can’t offer. To give you an idea where I am, I will kick staff guardians without giving them a chance but will give a necro or ranger a chance to prove themselves (usually for a whole run, but I’ll kick before running the next path), and I never kick engineers.
Just run knights gear with zerker trinkets, hammer + mace/shield.
You will be able to mitigate loads of dmg and heal / protect your group while dpsing.I’m not into melting mobs or seeing a cascade of numbers, I’m the one that keeps your squishy pure dps class alive.
This attitude is similar but MUCH better than the one that a near failed SE1 group I was in had. 3 guardians including me, 1 staff ele, mesmer. Before starting starting one of the guards says “stacking on the 3 golems hasn’t been working recently”…. Oh god staff camping cleric, I just know it. He was mace/shield staff… he swapped at least. Ele was in water so much I never got a might blast off. Other guard was hybrid and the mesmer wasn’t traited right but at least he used sword/X for his 2 sets. But I was like “Its Just SE1, its not like its actually hard, I’ve trioed this successfully and with little effort”… We cleared the first part without too much trouble, just took a bit longer than normal due to above issues. Get to the 3 golems. Stack up, I pop my wall, and use my burst damage skills. Golems get hammered pretty badly by me… But no other damage was done so they aren’t dead by the time my wall goes down and I run out of burst skills. Party starts taking damage, one of the guard pops his wall, still taking too much damage, I start rotating in aegis skills and condition cleanses. Still taking too much… I go down, rest of party goes down a split second later. Noticed that the other guards players expended any effort trying to do damage, all of their actions were dedicated towards “healing” One had the healing tome out when he went down.
Yeah, extreme and sad example. We got through it on the next attempt after I threatened to kill the instance if they didn’t equip their dps weapons and contribute something actually useful and wanted for once (like how is 4 minutes of effective progress up to that point even a threat, its not like I was threatening to kill 30 minutes of arah progress). Still took too long because they were traited/geared for wvw or something equally as relevant to dungeons but at least they were using GS and FGS was actually thrown down instead of summoned elementals.
Point of the story is “while some support/survival is nice, Never go FULL healer/tank”
(edited by notabot.3497)
I guess I just do too much small group/solo roaming and pve/dungeon for me to really get why you would even worry about the level of support you guys are wanting. I mean fights for me tend to not last long enough for care about the small heals. When I do get the urge to zerg/large group I just swap traits and some gear to a support build and not worry about damage as much.
Why do you guys need to heal so much? You already have strong normal heals, virtues, and a weapon that pretty much is useless other than healing/sustain… You want one of the stronger burst weapons to also provide sustain?
Get on a ranged level 80 character, empty your bag slots, go to Lion’s Arch and sell everything you get. Not the -best- money making out there, but the bag-per-minute of this event is really high, even when you are playing it correctly.
Why ranged? I was melee on a glass character only exotics and had not trouble at all. All boons and healing from the zerglings makes it nearly impossible to die.
When roaming rescuing citizens the vets and elites are solo-able, still not seeing the problem.
LA is pretty decent return on time, still not as good as doing the 6 or so fastest dungeon runs, but once you get those done its better than going for the next 6 fastest runs.
Check prices on TP, Check contents of Wallet. Put in as many orders as you can for the stuff you need. Go earn some gold while you wait for orders to be filled. Repeat as oftent as needed.
Sword/focus + GS for 99 percent of the content. Swap to a scepter manually if you are soloing champs or doing WBs that you can’t melee (which is nearly none of them, almost all are melee) Use sword/focus skills and GS leap to keep up blinds, spam that virtue for same reason. Putting points into virtues make spamming virtues makes it even better to do this. 20/25/0/0/25 is the dps meta as far as I’m aware of. It gives enough survival and dps to annihilate anything in pve open world. Use retreat, focus, shelter, aegis, and your renewed focus to ignore damage when you can’t just dodge it. If you can’t handle this build in zerk gear knights works till you are used to it. You in general don’t need vit, though 5 points into honor for vigor is ok.
The problem with putting trait points into valor and honor is they just don’t do anything you need in pve, and cost you most of your damage multipliers. PVE is easy if you can deal damage, and hard if you can’t.
Sword takes ages to kill things in PvE (relatively). Use scepter/mace/staff to burst as you run in then switch to GS to kill them. I prefer staff personally as the symbol can be used to stack swiftness while you’re fighting the mob. You’ll want to run something like 20/25/0/25/0 since Virtues isn’t terribly helpful in open world. Basically just do:
- Roll at mob to burn endurance (activates Elusive Power)
- Use Smite/Symbol
- Switch to GS and unload. Don’t use Binding Blade or Leap or Faith unless you need them to get closer to mobs.If it’s not an elite or vet and doesn’t die after that you probably just need better gear.
Wait, did you actually recommend mace for open world stuff? Also sword isn’t slow if you trait for good damage. Its auto attack is good and you have a blind/gap closer on it. Its for the rotation with GS anyways cycling between the two while you wait for Whirling wrath cool downs. GS auto attack is somewhat underwhelming so its better to do weapon swaps.
Also, wtf is with “bursting” with staff? its crap damage that is really only good for tagging events where you can’t reach the enemy before they are dead. The swiftness is such a non issue I don’t even bother pulling out the staff anymore. Scepter, meh, smite is OK but the rest of it is just blah, its better to just close the gap and fight. I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard somebody say that wasting endurance was a good thing either.
lol the lvl 30 dungeon actually im going to start calling the lvl 30 dungeon a lvl 80 dungeon cause that’s how hard it is, I don’t enjoy having to waste all my money to repair my gear cause im dieing all the time and don’t enjoy wasting all that time to get there to find out we aren’t going to beat it. Like lets be honest here the dungeon is to hard. like really the dungeon should be modified by the level the dungeon is listed for so the lvl 30 dungeon should be hard for a level 30 but also be able to beat it with a party of lvl 30’s, and even high level players have troubles beating the lvl 30 dungeon like really. Like they need to set the difficulty down so lvl 30 can beat the lvl 30 dungeon cause in my opinion its really not a lvl 30 dungeon.
Complaining about repair costs, 2014….really?
I did AC story with my level 30 in the first month of launch, wasn’t too bad. I can see how it can be hard at the lovers if you have a terrible party and suck yourself though. The rest of it is so easy I used to use the dungeon to level low level alts since its fast and gives good XP.
Maybe they buffed it, its been months since I’ve done it, and almost a year since I’ve had to do it with a level 30. Somehow I doubt that though. I think the real problem is that the people who are still doing it are small in number and often new and stubborn about not wanting to actually learn the content. There is nothing that is unfair in that place unless you randomly get the troll, even then its not to bad.
Meta for pvp/wvw changes over time. There was a time where warriors with the worst pvp class, now they aren’t. This is the result of patches and shifting counterplay. Deal with it, its just how competitive games are.
Thank you for the replies. Your answers are much appreciated.
I was having major problems in Dredgehaunt Cliffs because the dredge are immune to blind and they would kill me with ranged.
You reflect the shots and pull them in with GS5 followed by GS2. The dredge in DHC are trivial with a dps guard. 1-2 skill uses kills entire bunches with cleaves. Sword 2 is a great teleport gap closer and once your are in their face they crumble to even auto attacks. If you get hit hard somehow pop some aegis skills, shelter, or renewed focus. Or focus 5 if you just need a little bit of extra time to cleave down the mobs. IIRC sword 3 is also of use against the dredge, its a decent enough ranged attack after all.
Also find a guild that will take you, most socialization takes place in guilds. Often you will find leveling buddies because people level alts with guild members more often than not.
and how much gold when you have a necro as your only lvl 80, not max geared and only have 2 hours to play?
Well it sucks that you chose a bad for pve class as your only character. But that being said I have necros in many of my runs, and there are good builds for dungeon running out there. Of course 99 percent of necros don’t want to actually play power necro even when its the only good option for dungeons so people don’t
like necros in groups (that and higher skilled players get more out of other classes, so the pool of skilled necros willing to play a decent build is very small). Heck I have a necro at 80 and while its not as good as my warrior, mesmer, guardian, or thief that I have at 80, its still good enough to be part of dungeon tours.
Time constraints? Do as much as you can. Lack of gear? Do more dungeons, get the gear. Its cheap, there are no excuses for being a lazy bum and complaining about being poor. Getting gold in this game is easy, even with 2 hours of time a day and not running dungeons should be able to get an exotic set completed in a week or two.
If you really want to make money in this game you should be TP flipping. They can technically never nerf it and profits are possibly unlimited if you are smart and do your research and invest wisely… It also doesn’t take much to start either.
If I want to I could turn 100g into a 1000g within a month, easily, but it’s boring… so I go the slower way of FG and dungeons.
If you run dungeons you can earn 1000g in a month… 30 gold a day is doable even if you don’t run all the paths, AC 1&3 is 3 gold, SE 1&3 is 2 gold, CM 1&3 is 2 gold, TA F&U is 2 gold, COE all is 3 gold, HotW 1 is 1 gold, CoF 1&2 is 2 gold =15 gold. That is no hard to pug paths and only counting the bonus chest, not the drops, not the normal rewards, and not the stuff you can salvage from the dungeon tokens. Once you factor that its about 30+ gold a day. AC+SE should be about 1 hour, CM+TA is hour 2, COE is an hour 3, and COF+HotW is hour 4. Those times are assuming you are in normal capable pugs not a regular speed clear tour group. That includes the time to merch your trash and salvage your white-yellow drops and banking the mats.
I’m assuming this is for PVP cause all the builds I’ve seen put up so far are crap for PVE. Putting points into toughness tree for PVE is an utter waste and you might as well just 4 man dungeons without that guard cause he is contributing next to nothing. Better off with a nice dps hammer build with perma protection. Something like a 15/15/0/20/20 or of you are comfortable with purging flames, just run a 25/15/0/20/10. Both of those builds will give you great dps, perma group protection and enough condi cleanse for most stuff in PVE of course.
How many words into the OP did you read?
I read the whole thing. The part I wasn’t clear on was the “skill group” part. If he meant dungeon runs since I don’t really understand what a skill group would be in PVP unless he’s talking team PVP. Regardless, like I said in the first sentence of my post, I’m assuming he means purely from a 100% PVP standpoint since like I said, any of these builds listed are pretty crappy for PVE.
Are you blind? He said WvW and you bring the crappy PvE Meta. Go with that to WvW and lets see how well you will do it
I would say for WvW there isn’t really a meta, is up to personal preference. I often play in Zerg and sometimes I command too (very little yet, Idk about the future) so I run the classic AH 0/0/30/30/10, but sometimes I take out 5 in Virtues and use it in Radiance, it depends. I run with cleric armor and weapons and soldiers Trinkets, with Knight Amulet and 1 ring.
I sometimes run the meta with a mix of zerk and valk in wvw instead of zerk (which is my pve/dungeon set), and it works ok for roaming, yak killing, taking camps, and fighting at the edges of zergs. Its not optimal by any means but it has good damage, and enough survival for what I’m expecting. Going full AH clerics/soldier is a no damage pure survival build so its pretty limited to zerg/commanding. IIRC the meditation build is more suited for roaming/camp capping than the pve meta or the AH build.
Sword/focus + GS for 99 percent of the content. Swap to a scepter manually if you are soloing champs or doing WBs that you can’t melee (which is nearly none of them, almost all are melee) Use sword/focus skills and GS leap to keep up blinds, spam that virtue for same reason. Putting points into virtues make spamming virtues makes it even better to do this. 20/25/0/0/25 is the dps meta as far as I’m aware of. It gives enough survival and dps to annihilate anything in pve open world. Use retreat, focus, shelter, aegis, and your renewed focus to ignore damage when you can’t just dodge it. If you can’t handle this build in zerk gear knights works till you are used to it. You in general don’t need vit, though 5 points into honor for vigor is ok.
The problem with putting trait points into valor and honor is they just don’t do anything you need in pve, and cost you most of your damage multipliers. PVE is easy if you can deal damage, and hard if you can’t.
The problem with this game is that its so easy, and ppl hardly take time to know their class, which makes me SAD. I wish they would make a few more dungeons that are challenging,, that keep u on your toes. If u find SE to hard maybe u should go and play AC, or something lover lvl.
SE and CM are easier for me than AC, but then again I’m a reflect guardian/mesmer as my mains…
IDK why people are so upset about the “grind” in this game. I can get a new level 80 geared in zerker exotics + scholar runes in like 2 days of dungeon runs. That is 8 hours split between 2 days, or 2 hours over 4 days. For all but main characters that is all you need for 99.99 of PVE non fractal content. Its even easier to get most wvw gear because most of the sets are pretty cheap. You want a legendary? Stop being plebes and earn some gold. 3k gold: 30 gold a day: 100 days. Yeah, that is painful but that is top item buying outright instead of making one. 2 months of play per legendary is very doable if you are making one/not going for the most popular. Honestly earning karma is more of a pain in the butt because they killed karma for dungeon runs. Ascended gear items are way easier to earn than that, its the time gating that gets people more than anything. Anybody who knows how to earn gold can finish their set within a month without even trying that hard. Getting complete best in slot items with only a couple months of play? Very easy to do, that is just doing easy dungeon paths over a couple hours everyday. You can even pop into WB events between runs to keep it interesting. Hell I threw my garbage WB yellows into the forge with stones and managed to get zap and the one for dreamer, sure lotto chances ect, but once you have all the other gifts tossing some in at the same time you earn the gold isn’t that bad.
Open world is bad loot/time invested, trains are very boring even compared dungeons and even at best don’t earn as much as dungeons… WvW is hit and miss because bag dropping fights aren’t constantly happening, you can spend 20 minutes running around the map trying to find a fight even when zerging.
Playing long enough to earn a daily and tagging some events isn’t going to earn you squat in the way of gold. You have to do the content that actually pays, do the things that give decent drops, and know all the tricks to salvaging. Hint: salvage ectos/inscriptions from dungeon token items. Watch for drops that have sigils/runes worth more than the item its on.
But I like open world content! I don’t like dungeons! Well go to midlevel areas and do some dynamic events with lots of mobs. The stuff they drop have a much higher amount of high value mats. Heck level your characters to mid levels to increase your mid tier mats/salvages. Since everybody is either doing QD train or end of game mobs… bottom and top tier mats have no value but there is scarcity in the mid level stuff.