Guild Wars 2

On elitism with runs, is it okay to forgive a guard that staffs in combat if he drops fire fields first?

Actually, looking at the mechanics for launch (given that most decap engies use it) I think that it should be the one to be looked at. As a control effect, Launch is annoying not only because it has a direction modifier, but it also has a time component in which your character is knocked down. That’s what makes it painful – you are CC’ed in two perspectives – you get pushed away from your location, and at the same time when you land you still have to wait for your character to get up.

Maybe a change to launch would be better?

The idea that the Pact is a task force designed specifically to fight dragons is noticeable, but you have to account that while the Orders make up most of the Pact forces, they also include auxiliaries of all nations in the continent of Tyria. You really can’t deploy them all without due support from their home nations, as shown with Reach’s reluctance to give support to Lion’s Arch. In addition, during the rescue operations, while it wasn’t the Pact that responded, the Orders did. All the three orders assisted in the evacuation of the Arch as well as setting up the refugee camps. If I remember right, the Priory helped set up another gate to cut through Lornar’s from Lion’s Arch, Vigil set up the temporary main site for Lion’s Arch, and Whispers for general evacuation of many citizens of L.A.

Not sure on a correct answer, but I think the host system isn’t just limited to dungeons, but instancing. I’m not privy to how GW1 handled instances and hosting, and the exact behavior to it. What I know is that they haven’t patched it fully yet, but instance-owner change behavior has been reported when merging parties, implying that the code to decouple instances from owners hasn’t been fully established due to bug-checks from personal story instances.

Hmmm… I think the bug might be related to the issue that objects don’t vanish properly when destroyed. Either the bug occurs because of animation locking, or a case of dangling pointers and server-client code not updating properly. 2c for it.

Note 1: Objects seem to have a behavior to run when it updates as dead, therefore that might be the case.

Bleh, I misworded. Should be vuln, not boon stacking.

Wow. That much of server AI reduction is probably annoying, but because of the smaller dungeons being instanced, and limited in parties, it might be explainable.

It’s actually a comparison, since while necros are probably equal or even greater in response to an engie to the role of vuln stacking/DPS, they cover it up with the number of blast finishers and a fire and smoke field in a singular kit. That’s just my 2c, though.

Edit 2: Given changes in FGS rush code , would it make engineers much more valuable in boon stacking, or not?
‘course, that’s the problem with engies – composition wise, their role as a multi-tool is okay to round out groups, but they aren’t that needed in max-speed compositions.

Just a curiosity, do most boss AI have simple, rudimentary routines that don’t branch out?

Prioritizing CF409 before condi pass should work as a solution.

Engineer’s shtick, I think, revolves all around heavy, suppresive CC (IMO most of engie’s offensive power comes either from hybrid conditions, or CC conditions) and pretty okay support, kinda like counterpart to guardians (mid-high direct damage, and defensive capability). Changing AR to something else will return engies to their old regular roles. Also, increase node size as per said before.

Manu’s Frankenstein of an idea has a lot of merit. Having a way to throw back condis is much more satisfying, and frankly adds another dimension to the engineer’s kitten nal. Although, come to think of it, it’s mostly a clutch offensive trait now if it’s put that way, as compared to the defensive idea of automated response.

Might this be a repeat of old queries, but I’d wish engineers get stowing animations for their kit tools.

Has anyone ever checked what kind of configuration this setup follows? Is vertically aligned, or is it horizontally aligned?

Camera tip if you’re a guard using s/f and you have to use sword 2 on a cornered enemy – back out of the stack a bit, with the target in front of you and on its behind the corner, then use sword 2. This ensures you don’t put the camera on the wall, with your vision obscured by both your model and your allies.

Well kitten that’s a bad way of putting the statement.

I think what he means is that the implementation of the items are bugs, because they effectively add much more NPC calculations than usual to the server, and it’s given that while the summons do act simple, there’s pathfinding and behavior to factor in. Coupled with the fact that the game is object heavy (what with all the fields, projectiles, hit-scans, and physics to track), and that instances are particularly run in similar server spaces with worlds, the decision to limit NPC summoning might be a band-aid fix to server lag.

A traditional option would be tying the skill behind quests, but I think the tech behind quests isn’t that available in-game, not to mention that it’s not really that homogenous with the overall perceived game design. Tying the skill unlock as an item reward during the personal story also work, but the problems you encounter is that it’s a mostly a hierarchical unlock (how far are you in the personal story to unlock x items) meaning that on older players creating new characters it’s just probably going to be extremely repetitive.

On the side of informing the players for the skills, adding a location list for skills in the trainers would be nice, but I’m not sure if the tech implementation is present in-game. The current book-reading implementation in-game isn’t exactly good, so it will take a while to do so.

Yeah, that was my bad, I wasn’t reading well. Anyways, on the 30/30/x/x/x setup, it’s because of the modified ammo trait, right? Is it better than 30/15/x/x/25?

For one, flamethrower on an engineer is really not that good since if you’re so adamant on using it, you just benefit from condition burn, bleed on crit (and while it has faster acquisition of bleeds, it’s not -that- good) vuln stacking (grenade does it better) and extra toughness when traited(which, in turn, makes you a much more likely target for initial attack aggro of mobs – you really don’t want that).

I’m not sure, but going bomb/nades should be enough, since engineers are better off spreading conditions to packs of targets, and have better condition application (bomb can give burn/confuse from traits, nades give bleed/poison. Flat damage wise it also is better than the other options. I think it would be best if you go full kits (but makes you lose out on other options like a free slot for either backup reflect, extra might stack, etc) and use flamethrower only to keep burn application using FT4 as well as a clutch blind.

Personally, if they made ranger pets have higher potential DPS on single targets I could probably forgive them. Most likely, though, they never thought of higher-level options for rangers, opting for much more mediocre solutions.

On the Mai thing, I think you can either blind her and make the shadow-step miss, or use a non-aegis block (not sure if aegis works too, haven’t tested it yet BUT IMO the previous iteration of AR couldn’t block the shadowstep). Reflecting the shadow-step makes whoever reflected it get ported to Mai, though – projectile absorb is better for her.

She also shoots SS at the farthest target, and her tell (while hard to read if she’s being blanketed by FX) is pretty noticeable and takes around half to a full second to fire. Kinda good when rescuing someone by ressing.

I think if it’s just making all missiles not be affected by reflect fields then you can still survive given that you have smoke screen, SoA and shield block – since those destroy projectiles. Ele air focus 4 should also protect you. If it makes all projectiles be unaffected by any projectile manipulation, though…

Well, good luck?

Soooo… bombs are more DPS and easier to handle but less attack procs → less on-crit procs, while nades have less DPS and harder to handle but gives more attack procs?

Maybe a better advice would be to make sure that you’re out of combat, empower→swap staff to another weapon while out of combat (not just plain weapon swap, but unequip staff and equip another weapon in place), then go to town? At least it saves the party unnecessary might stacks which can be done in combat.

Ummm… in consideration: is empower better than virtue spam for might?

Gonna answer this one to test if I do remember guard properly:

To be fair, an s/f guardian has less passive defense than a full-time hammer guard due to lack of protect from the AA proc, loss of extra CC from the chain thingy (immob/soft CC), banish (launch/hard CC) and that warding circle (knockback/harc CC), but in return you gain active attack blocking and an in-combat blast finisher, two on-demand blinds (one is AoE and a gap closer, the other is bouncing, a condition cure, and addt’l regen) and higher sustained DPS (if you’re lazy fulltime use of RHS is a plus to sword).

An S/F weapon set helps the guard have more offense, even if you have different weapon sets slotted in. Hammer is useful, true, but with S/F you can at least provide better damage. That said, since it has lower defensive capability with hammer, the first shots in combat are irreparably crucial, since you have to constantly make sure your targets are blinded to be able to survive the first volley.

Edit: ninja’ed above, and additionally: my personal gripe with using hammer is that it interferes visually in whatever field I laid down for others to blast finish with – since purging flames and hallowed ground is always in my setup if reflects/projectile reflect are not required. I’ve groaned so many times when I’m on my engineer trying to set-up an in-combat might or burst heal but I can’t since there’s a symbol on the way.

Are there any methods in place to calculate time-damage analysis of attack chains? Most of the stuff I’ve seen here maintain damage numbers… but correct me if I’m wrong, some (if not most) of the spreadsheet calcs shown here base themselves on average attack rotations. How about checking if the attack rotations are either front-loaded or backloaded damage, as well as if it’s either action heavy or not to maintain? For this stage, it might be best to turn off effect modifiers based on boons and conditions and focus on sole damage done of said rotation, all boosted by armor, food, slaying potions and sigils, as well as rune bonuses.

Once we can get there, we can probably model the boons, conditions, and non-permanent effects for every attack present and update the old data, because I think this can show the possible damage of a run, and how interrupting during a skill affects DPS.

This way we can check the average attack rotations, because AFAIK that’s may give us the reason why 4w/1m has greater damage because the damage is spiked in the front and easier to maintain, therefore having better efficiency, as compared to high-damage potential rotations but have skills that have many actions required, therefore increasing the effect of network-based delay on the rotations.

This is from a noob/amateur’s perspective though, so take it with a grain of salt. This kind of testing requires extensive knowledge of skill data and how they are implemented in game, as well as a lot of number crunching, since not only do you have to take into account damage and time, but also other internal things in the calculation such as boon duration of the skill, skill timings and cooldowns down to the 0.1th of a second.

P.S: With a little modification, this can be extended to PvP, simply because we need to also include animation timings of the skill, which may or may not be off by a couple of fractions of seconds.

DD attacks can be modeled using effective power, right? How do you model overall condition damage, though – taking into account on crit effects?

Another question: do you guys have regular and optimal calculations for conditions?

I feel that immobilize should deny evasion frames. Maybe this change was a precursor to it?

Endgame is on you as a player. You can go back to being a role player in the oldest RPG sense, you can choose to explore the systems ingame, you can make something for the community, or you can spend it with your friends, doing the things you like best.

To start things off…

Percentile damage multipliers, whether from traits, consumables, or effects, stack in a multiplicative matter, but some of them only take effect on certain conditions.

Not sure if verified as well, but are conditions applied first before calculating damage taken? This is in relation to skills that apply a condition AND deal damage, since I’d like to verify if condition-boosted traits such as Attack of Opportunity from warrior directly improve attacks with bleed on them, such as the warrior sword F1.

Question, though: I don’t really know if there are percentile stat modifiers, but if there are, how would they interact with flat numerical stat modifiers? Do flat modifiers get applied first before doing multiplicative changes from the percentile stat modifiers?

reserved for indices

Now that the new trait fact systems are up and running, there’s a lot more transparency in how skill calculations work, probably opening up avenues of theory crafting builds and play styles even further.

The thing is, while these skill facts might seem deceptively simple, there’s a lot of under-the-hood stuff still happening, and the in-game information is sorely lacking in how said skills interact, with the said stuff not too much spread out to the player base

Gonna open this thread (if there are others thread similar for this, it would be nice to please post some links to it since forum search is a jerk and broken) to help congregate information for would-be skill builders and methods of (theoretical) calculations and team compositions.

Oceanic here playing on EU. Transcontinental locations usually add 100-200ms delay in general. If you’re on a wireless connection add 50-100ms. It’s not that gamebreaking but you do have to relearn attack timings.

In the dreary fields of Kessex Hills, something is stirring. With the Halloween’s festivities (and tragedies) underway, a moment of solace (from chaos) arrives for every race, in the form of Thorn and his followers…

…and yet something much more afoul is afoot. The fertile treeline that once gives shade to the blood-soaked lands that Seraph and Centaur have fought over has disappeared. The ruins of Auld Red Wharf, which has once concealed the murderous krait prowling it, has been repurposed, the blocks and timber that had made it whole placed in piles underwater.

And finally, a mysterious pillar of shadows has taken form in the middle of the dreary Viathan Lake, once home to a powerful krait witch, now made inaccessible to all travelers alike by an invisible wall of force pushing people back.

So what is going on?

What do you mean by 470+504? As I see it, the triple chop attack damage on tooltip listed is 470+470+504.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but guard/war/mes meta builds became meta because quickness was a full x2 compression on attack rates, as well as guard/mes providing enough reflect time for the warriors to safely nuke targets down, and mes using signet of inspiration to literally double boon output to other classes. The combination of that setup made it better, and with most of the party being heavies, lets players safely dodge one more time even on low health.

With the nerfs to warrior DPS rates and quickness, the setup while good isn’t really that much effective overall.

That is hilariously interesting. Since they already have infrastructure in place for field removal (looking at you Teq turrets), it’s the best way an engineer can be used in the field – a manipulator that kittens up your combo setups. I’d reserve field nullification or field punishment to the mesmers and necromancers respectively, though.

Actually, you have tools to CC – it’s up to you to build it. Here, classes can provide damage, but have clear and distinct roles.

Take for example, a warrior and a guard – both can spec for full damage, but a warrior provides the offensive support role and the steady damage role, either by using shouts such as On My Mark and For Great Justice, or banners such as Banner of Discipline, Strength, Defense, and Tactics. A guard does the steady damage role as well, but provides more defensive utility, such as condition removal either by shout or virtue, area buffing by way of consecrations, projectile denial by way of SoA and WoR, or even clutch healing using Light of Deliverance from Tome of Courage.

Classes can do roles, it’s just that roles are decentralized from the gear, and is based on traits, with gear just improving how your character plays out. Unlike other games where the content is heavily dependent on gear, here the content is most likely dependent upon above, weapon setup, and utilities.

With enough damage dealt and pro-party RNG (means the flames are spawning almost most of the time on the boss and you’ve locked him on the edge of the area) you can eschew with stability and stunbreaks – but it’s really better to have them.

Minor nitpick on toughness bit: it initially helps in focusing first aggro on you if everyone enters aggro range at the same time BUT damage will even out the aggro table within the fight.

Unless the boss has frontloaded attacks in which shield+toughness works due to you soaking it up (even then, you can probably just dodge it if it’s not a channel/AOE/etc), you can aggro even better if your damage is more or less the equal or greater than the group while having higher armor (i.e, guards/warriors will most likely get targeted first unless mobs have custom scripts [see: golem boss in CoE] or higher armor enters combat last, in which case inherent armor cannot trump already dealt DPS).

Also, last point @ Yaki: reducing your DPS means that you’ll be exposing your group to higher chances of getting trained, since while you ‘might not’ be that great of sustain DPS as compared to you group, built right your innate armor differences will be enough to equalize your DPS threat to the mob AI such that you’ll be focused down, leaving your team to maneuver properly.

Ergo, reducing your DPS as a guardian offloads your capability to hold aggro – in which case your allies will most likely get trained and go down faster than you can cover them as a result. That’s why clerics go down last in an untrained party of zerks because not only do they have defensive stats, their lack of DPS hurts the group as a whole with respect to being unable to hold mob aggression and the fact that even in clerics, they can only prevent higher mistakes done by the group and not all of them fully.

Vargamonth.2047:

Advent Leader.1083:

Also, is it just me, or is the war/guard/ele/thief/ranger setup being ‘best DPS’ mirrors what setup Destiny’s Edge have?

They actually lack a Guardian because Logan always runs away :P

Oooh, so that’s why Snaff died. He had no one blinding/stopping (using Line of Warding)minions and reflecting or absorbing enemy projectiles, as well as aegis’ing him. KITTEN YOU LOGAN!

Yaki, the problem with healing based supports is that the boss outDPSes the rate at which you can drop cover heals, which makes negation tactics (blinds and reflects) much more effective aside than healing.

Stacking guardians means you’re missing out on offensive boosts. The other posters above had already said that.

Also, is it just me, or is the war/guard/ele/thief/ranger setup being ‘best DPS’ mirrors what setup Destiny’s Edge have?

Shelledfade.6435:

JMadFour.9730:

Is that how Guild Wars 2 is meant to be played?

No matter what class you play, or what the classes are capable of, or what weapons they can use….

spec and gear for the absolute highest DPS you can get, to the exclusion of any and everything else. and just hit Q before a big attack.

that’s the correct way to play this game?

Depends on what your class is.

Personally I think guardians playing support are way more useful than zerk guardians. Zerk guardians are like a contradiction to themselves. They have no dmg at all and are almost negating their usefulness in a group. Every time I see a zerk guardian I want to tell him to roll a warrior if he wants dps then boot him out of the party.

But you also have to understand there is no trinity in this game though. It’s mostly about finding the most effective way to play your class. If you think doing that is by making your character full-damage then that’s obviously the way you like to play. When I think about it off the top of my head the only truly useful support classes are probably guardian and I’ve seen some ele’s do some really nice healing as well. Necro’s… meh I’d rather have a full condition dmg necro in my group than a support necro. Engi’s…. meh, totally useless.

Other than that though, your statement isn’t totally wrong. But it isn’t 100% truth either.

A DPS guardian isn’t actually a full on DPS guardian, it’s a guardian maximizing damage and taking advantage of either being an active protector through judicious use of blinds, aegis, and projectile denial to protect his team. In addition, he can provide a fair amount of vuln and more importantly, fire and light fields. Fire fields provide might stacks to the party as a group, making them deal more damage as a whole. We can also see the guardian be an effective condition cleanser if purely set-up for it (PoV builds)

We also have to take into account that they deal nominal damage AND is pretty much effective as damage-dealing anchors simply because their initial toughness when they aggro a monster + impressive and -active- party defense = party not being targeted… much.

DPS wise a guardian has also good sustain on their auto, so yes, DPS guardians as a whole are pretty impressive, but their only main weakness is that they need to play better to survive, and the have to time blocks, blinds and projectile fields right because they will most likely have aggro on them all the time.

You are also pretty much uninformed on engineers, as they provide considerable amount of vulnerability stacking (primary being vulnerability stacking) and they can supplement other class specs by way of them having so many blast finishers that they can either burst heal, burst might (3-9 stacks of might, and maximum I think is twelve or fifteen), and surprisingly burst stealth (they can give 10s of stealth to an area like shadow refuge). They also have access to chills and blinds, and while their damage is pretty lower in spectrum, they make it up for being able to fill gaps in party composition (they can provide projectile defense to the party with Mag Shield and Throw Elixir U). Also, if patch update in Oct 17 is correct from the posts here, they provide access to group stealth (Throw Elixir S) or stability (Throw Elixir .

Over 3000 power? How the hell do you have that on a PTH warrior? Are you sure about those numbers, or you’re just making false claims for that?

Again.

Rangers = precision boosts via spotter and permafury (wh+moa), five might (if carrying stalker), secondary projectile reflect (on axe, party can stack inside ranger model while meleeing if necessary), blast finisher on warhorn, as well as acceptable personal damage.

Engineer = primary vuln stacker + assorted stuff (blast field finishers x 3 – 5, which can provide good burst heals if done in succession even in zerk gear/9-15 stacks of might/area stealth provider, secondary reflect via elixir u, and if we believe next patch stability provider and stealth provider via elixir b and s respectively.) That’s not to mention great CC (although you need to be a bit careful to pull it off), even when traited glassy. Also acceptable DPS.

Spotter + Frost spirit is a nice boost, and you can maintain permanent fury + 5might with rangers using pets.