Guild Wars 2

Not fractals (cant convince myself to get on the agony resistance merry-go-round). But dungeons yes.

All I play is PvE and I’ve been experimenting since the latest nerf. Supposedly all builds work in PvE but there a clearly some that work better than others. This build is a 0-30-10-30-0 and uses Assassin’s Reward (which still doesn’t make it to Grandmaster but is better than I gave it credit for being initially – or maybe its just better than most of the 5 pt alternatives):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYUQRAoY6alcmaOHcS5E+5Ey2jKUo4JuCJV3jryq0KA-jQEBYfhGVMQYLI4LYEEhm8GiuAgyAhIAL/pIasFNFRjVVTQWfET5KpWca12xJyiGQKgNWGB-e

Ran through several several tests and its an ok build in that it will allow you to go one on one with just about any veteran/elite and allow you to solo some champs (recommend berserker armor swap out though – I’ve had that Rampager armor forever and will be swapping it for Ascended Berserker over the next Month or so). Just tried it on a Scarlet invasion and I could pretty much jump in the middle of anything and not get downed – anytime I got too damaged I could always break away and used P/P to regen.

You could also try this 0-30-20-20-0 build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYUQRAoY6alUmiPHcS5E+5Ey2jKUo4JOFGVS1p4qkPA-jQEBYfhGVMQYLI4LYUgAEEhmwAhKBiIAL/pIasVNFRjVVTQWfET5Kp2bJymTr2qDQKgNWGB-e

If you are fond of playing a stealth thief in PvE.

I was hoping when they said 35% increase that meant a 35% increase in the healing potency of the skill – so go from 81 to 109 might not have been that bad. Honestly, they just don’t really seem to have any idea how to handle the class. If this is their idea of a Grandmaster Acrobatics skill then I’m fairly disgusted with them.

Just did the math for Assassin’s Reward vs. Pain Response.

Assuming I can spend 88 initiative in a minute (base plus every initiative I generate in 60 seconds based on my previous calculations of the impact on initiative from the December 10th update) my max healing per minute would be 7656. The caveat here is that a possibly large portion of that will be wasted – that is all or part of the healing from any particular initiative spending attack. will have no effect. So lets assume that only half of that healing is effective: 3828 per minute.

Pain Response if it triggers twice in a minute (30 second cooldown) would heal for a total of 4538 (2269 x2) AND I would remove three fairly common conditions (bleeding, burning, poison) twice. In this case though I can expect ALL of that healing to matter since my base hit points are 18772 and this trait will not trigger until I’ve lost at least 4693 hit points.

So, clear winner is still Pain Response.

Not running a glass cannon build. Only do PvE. Thought I would check out Assassin’s Reward before the update on the 10th and after. Heal pre 10th was 81 pts./initiative and heal post was 87 pts./initiative.

Was that really what you considered a reasonable “buff” to move a trait from Master to Grandmaster? It feels like a not a very funny joke. Thinking about going back to Pain Response.

Overall I expected the changes to initiative to be a wash for my build (ran the math ahead of the change). But I may well have been quite wrong about that (so far it feels that way). I used to occasionally solo champions in PvE and now I think that won’t go the way it used to . . .

Anet – it seems to me if have in the past and probably will ongoing nerf initiative, stealth, and dodging/endurance. Here’s a thought for you: HOW ABOUT GIVING US SOMETHING IN RETURN! You know maybe something like hit points or toughness or even just a passive dodge ability . . .

We have two computers with GW2 on them: A PC and a laptop. The computers have separate accounts. Recently the laptop has not been able to access BL at all. Only getting the message: ERROR: Invalid authorization

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Same issue. Made one key, then another just to see if it repeated – no achievement awarded.

Just switched my Soldier/PVT ranger with Lyssa Runes to a full set of Celestial with ranger runes. Kept 3 Soldier trinkets and 2 Celestial trinkers. Crafted a wupwup longbow as well. Also changed my build at the same time to something most WvW/PvP people would probably think is nuts (20-20-10-10-10) but I only do PvE for the most part. The DPS increase is significant and I haven’t noticed a drop in survivability. Another poster noted that the runes are a different issue and they are, if you’re running a character with a strong crit chance they are the best runes you can have as far as I’m concerned. Been using them on critical striker thief with Rampager armor for about 9+ months.

I’ve experienced this event being griefed and its kitten annoying. If Anet rework this pre-event to allow the containers to reset after a short period of time it would be appreciated.

I’ve found the living world/story updates to generally be engaging and worth playing. The only one I’ve not really played have been the SAB updates. Which works for me as it gives me some downtime and as “semi-”permanent content I don’t feel like I’m permanently missing out on achievement points. HOWEVER . . . in the long run these updates will not suffice. Anet started a story with the Elder Dragons and they need to move it forward in a major way at some point. If Anet is not working on a major world expansion with added story, etc. they will slowly begin to lose players to the next new thing . . . eventually even me and I play 2-3 hrs each day now.

BTW – I agree with some of the other posts I’ve seen. I would recommend slowing the pace of the Living Story adds. Once a month is enough time for a substantial add, gives casual players more time to enjoy the new content, and probably will result in higher quality content overall (less unnecessary rushing on the part of the development teams).

gilch.6458:

PvE

Thank you…I couldn’t make any sense out of why D/D thief was condi… but didn’t wanna be rude to the guuldy lol..is precision / power the way to go?

Actually D/D has a reasonable number of conditions (poison, bleed, cripple, vulnerable). I run a PvE D/D – P/P thief and I use Rampager Armor with Superior Divinity Runes, Berserker weapons with life stealing and power on kill sigils, ascended “celestial” amulet and rings, ascended Berserker accessories, and an ascended Karka shell backpiece. Traits are 0-30-10-30-0. I find it to be a good combination of hitting power (~2700 attack)high crit chance (63%)strong crit damage (85%), plus good condition damage (450) to go to if you need, reasonable armor (over 2300), and good health (almost 17K) . . . for a thief. You’ll find the 5-1 combo can be spammed fairly well, and you can spam death blossom 3-4 times in row at times and between those to you can solo just about any PvE vet (Karka vets being an obvious exception).

Solo. Completed all of the achievements in two runs with a thief. Might be especially easy with a thief – invis and run past most of the mobs.

This definitely happens. I just had Scarlet make me her pet project in Glendarran Hills. Got downed once and defeated once by her. She would spawn on me even when I was not in combat. And at the end she spawned at my location. I think this may be the second time this has happened to me. Once before I remember thinking it was weird she kept spawning in every fight I was in but it wasn’t as bad previously (she didn’t spawn on me when I was solo ).

draxynnic.3719:

Actually, I’m being realistic about this – I don’t expect Kiel winning to change the direction things are going one bit.

However, my concern is that Evon winning MIGHT.

There have been signs that the ArenaNet/NCSoft brass have been taking notice of the complaints about RNG. They’ve gone from gem shop only (F&F) to gem shop boxes dropping very rarely in a specific zone (SS) to having a weaker version of the box that drops with reasonable regularity in the open world, but which has a miniscule chance of dropping what people really want (DB).

From the point of view of the grey suits, a win by a ticket that’s has somewhat cheaper RNG boxes as one of its draws could easily be seen as a referendum on RNG, leading them to claim that the vote results show that clearly the majority of players like the RNG. This goes doubly if there are a lot of key sales afterwards.

So, yeah, I don’t expect Kiel winning to change anything. Those same grey suits will explain it away as other factors rather than a rebellion against RNG. But I’d bet that if they get anything they can possibly spin as evidence for silent majority player support for RNG… they’ll grab it with both hands and shove it down the throat of any dissenters.

Maybe I’m being overly cynical here… but I know the tendency some people have to discard evidence they don’t like while pouncing on the merest scrap of evidence supporting their position. Especially when money is involved.

I think you nailed this one. Voting for her for the same reason. I don’t even mind the BL Keys since I typically get something good and useful from each chest — but I also don’t buy them often (only when they are on sale). The other RNG boxes are another matter – stringing people along on the miniscule chance they will get what they really want just sucks. Every time a fellow guild member suggests they will be buying the RNG boxes, or lamenting the fact that they did and got skrewed as a result – I want to hold an “intervention.” We like you, but behavior is just hurting yourself and others . . .

I’m heartened by the fact that Anet is finally implementing a new champions reward system, a new dungeon reward system and the currency wallet. I remember suggesting the first just after the game was released (seriously Anet – why was giving greens for soloing Champions considered adequate in the first place?). And I know many others have suggested changes to the dungeon reward system were needed. The wallet is such an obvious basic upgrade I figured Anet didn’t ship it with the first release because they wanted to sell character and bank space (cynical person that I am). These upcoming changes make me think that eventually/maybe they actually listen to their players.

So . . . in the (probably foolish) hope that it will make a difference in the long run, I think we should give Anet some very direct feed back on the three pieces of new content with this update: Aspect Arena, Southsun Survival and Candidate Trials. Which of those was the best, and which of them the worst, and why?

My “votes”:

Best: Candidate Trials t3 and t4 prior to the most recent patch. Pre-patch t3 and t4 you could use a strategy of hobbling and slowing the plunderers, only killing them when absolutely necessary and complete the events. That version of the event allowed a lot of players to complete it without it being an over the top grind. That version of the event rewarded players for focusing on achieving the goal, not for just trying to play king of the hill and slaughtering everything in sight. It also allowed people the option to farm it for the rare skins etc. if they chose to do so. Teams could have employed the same tactic slow plunderers, kill the launchers, manage spawns, etc. with one or two players near the spawn point, allowing the rest of the group to kill the other mobs. Succeed or fail in completing the event, the reward would have been more loot bags and a better chance for the rare skin drops.

Worst: Candidate Trials t3 and t4 post the most recent patch. What can you say about perhaps the single worst “fix” Anet has yet implemented? An absolute failure of hoard mode/king of the hill event where actually trying to fight off the mobs would simply get you defeated with several minutes remaining. Mobs that scaled so badly that the Veterans were really Champions. Mobs that traveled half way across the map to get to you. Mobs the refused to leash and followed you to the far end of the map. Mobs that when they did leash camped in exactly the wrong place (right next to the spawn points). CT t3&t4 became an anti-group group event in which you were better off using an exploit to solo or two-man to complete. An event that virtually required a specific gear set (berserker) and clearly favored certain classes (Warrior and Thief) over the others. And all for the incredible reward of 5-15 achievement points and a miniscule chance of getting a rare weapon skin.

I will give Anet one final piece of feedback on Candidate Trials – the duplication for each candidate, while it might have been the result of rushing the content on a tight schedule, was an opportunity lost. For example – you could have left Kiel’s version the same (protect the treasure from the pirates so she can give it back to those who lost it), but changed up the Evon version by having players steal the loot for Evon to use from the pirates who got there before the Players.

I’ll admit I didn’t try Aspect Arena, and I only played Southsun Survivor until I got an achievement (Headshots! since I refused to grind Candidate Trials t3-t4 for Evon. I found Southsun just ok, but I rarely find mini-games within games that engaging/enjoyable. Did anyone think either of those mini games were the best or worst of the new content?

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Difficulty – From the beginning, we wanted to create an event that would truly test player’s abilities to survive, whether solo or in groups. That’s when we came up with the concept of the [Challenge Event]. We wanted to create an event where it was easy to get bronze participation, moderately challenging to achieve silver, and difficult to get gold, and to provide an escalating difficulty curve by making use of tiers that got progressively harder, and progressively harder again with groups. We knew that this would not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we also know that there are many players who are eager to challenge themselves in this way, and we stand by the decision to include content for those players. We made sure to make the lower tiers as accessible for all players and play styles, and the upper tiers (III and IV) a serious challenge! Now, there’s hard and then there’s impossible. I can assure you that completing Tier IV with a group is absolutely possible, but it’s not in any way easy, or even feasible for an uncoordinated group. It requires the utmost concentration and communication, and so our expectation from the beginning was that only a small number of groups would accept the challenge, and even fewer would succeed. I’ve been impressed by the many different methods players are finding to solo Tier IV (Ii’s a feat even I myself have yet to achieve) but I’m just as eager to see what groups come up with to overcome this challenge!

Response: Wow, for 5 whole achievement points and near non-existent chance for a unique weapon skin. I’m glad you’re eager, the vast majority of the rest of us are just disgusted. Btw – you’ve successfully completely missed your mark – 99% of the GW2 player base cannot complete t3 or t4 on bronze let alone silver. After the recent patch, anyone claiming gold completion is either lying or just being a silly troll.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Rewards – There has been some confusion about the most optimal way to acquire the rewards in this event. We are seeing some players contend that the lowest risk option (staying up near the plunderer spawn points and away from the treasure piles) at the highest tier is the optimal path to acquiring an Aetherized weapon. This is wrong…somewhat. ? Employing this method will get you enough kill credit to earn one or two loot bags, but your chances for getting an Aetherized weapon actually increase with each subsequent loot bag that spawns. So if you really, really want to get your hands on some wicked Aetherblade gear, you actually stand to gain much, much more by taking more risks and defeating as many Aetherblades as possible at the highest tier you can manage. The greater the risk, the greater the reward.

So basically you are not supposed to complete this event but rather kill as many mobs as possible because success doesn’t improve your chance of being rewarded. Brilliant design philosophy. Wish you’d shared that earlier . . . some of us were stupidly trying to complete it. Oh wait . . . that was for those 5 Achievement Point silly me.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Achievements – There was an initial bug related to how we were tracking player’s progress through the tiers, which did not quite match up with what achievements you had unlocked. We made fixes to that bug, and now player progress for the tiers should be tied to what you’ve unlocked, achievement-wise. There was also an unfortunate bug which was fixed earlier today involving an issue where some of the Aetherblade waves would not spawn. The first bug made the achievements hard to understand, while the second made the achievements easier to attain. I deeply apologize on behalf of our team that these issues led to a less-than-optimal player experience. With these issues fixed, our hope would be that the achievements for the Candidate Trials are clearer and better balanced for their intended difficulty.

I think that covers most of the concerns I’ve read, but the team will continue to monitor feedback on the forums, and if further clarification is needed, rest assured that we will communicate that out to you, our amazing players! Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

Wrong. Here’s a thought bubble for you: If you’re going to call this “Elite Content” or “Challenge Event” shouldn’t something wonderfully elitist like a title, or a 100 achievement points or an exotic drop go with it? This feels a lot like one of those old comedy routines/movie moments where someone pratfalls, stands up and declares with as much dignity as possible “I meant to do that.”

MassDelusion.9130:

I can’t finish T4 Trials ONE DAY after it got patched.
It must be impossible.

Reduce the time by 5 minutes please

Please feel free to go finish T3 and T4 solo and post a video of it for all us noobs. Otherwise, just do us all a favor and go away . . . or at least stop the silly trolling.

Excalibur.9748:

Topher.1684:

Excalibur.9748:

It’s not easy, i wasted some significant time trying to solo it yesterday. I don’t want to be too quick to say it’s impossible (at least for solo), but it might be.

I can’t tell if you are being serious or not…but when they say solo, what they mean is solo by the spawn points. They don’t kill anything but the plunderers.

I know….. I have guides posted on how to solo it on T4 with 2 different methods:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Guide-for-candidate-trials-challenge/first#post2500525

They buffed it yesterday and NOW I think it’s very hard-impossible. Not sure if still possible to solo.

Just about everyone telling us how wonderfully ez it is hasn’t done it TODAY. To all of you: Go back, try and solo it and start with t3 and let us know if you can even complete that. For t3 you find yourself very overwhelmed with about 2 minutes left. Multiple plunderers 2 mortars, and the vets (with way too many hps) and trash mobs start to stack up on you. I soloed t4 two days ago and now I cannot get past t3.

To me what’s really sad about this is Anet’s inability to tell the difference between being clever/creative/thinking outside the box and an exploit. The appropriate way to do this would have been to reward people who focus on slowing down the plunderers, and killing them only when necessary (on their return) by slowing down the spawn rate (i.e., link mob spawns to the death of a plunderer). Tradeoff – fewer kills/less loot less possibility of a rare skin, etc. BUT you can finish it. Most players would be able to complete it on the bronze or silver level that way. Only a few would get gold completions. If you want players to keep coming back after the initial completion put a chest at the end with a chance to have a rare skin or something. But you don’t do what they did and turn it into a punishing grind.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

I think a lot of people don’t understand about what the patch did yesterday lol.

Nope. They have no clue. To me it now seems that the spawns are timed and not event based now. So regardless of how you careful you are, or how quickly you kill the plunders, and even if you’re soloing, you have a ridiculous number of enemies that have an obscenely large aggro radius and really really do not want to break aggro (going swimming doesn’t help and they will follow you around the rock now) at about 5-6 minutes in. T3 takes 7 minutes.

First: Hard/punishing content should not be temporary. The stories of the game are important to almost all the players and effectively locking some players out of story content is just inappropriate and frankly, unnecessary. Some of the AR material could have been toned down in Story Mode for a first time completion, then returned to its current level of difficulty in an “Explorable” Mode where only certain achievements could have been obtained. My guess (and it is just that – my guess) is that probably a good 50% of the people who tried the AR dungeon never completed it, anther 40% completed it once and probably swore to never return, maybe 5% went back 2-3 times, and about 5% thought it was just great and went back over and over again.

Second: Stop mixing PvE rewards in PvP/WvW. Not a single PvE player I know thought was either reasonable or acceptable to throw a jumping puzzle achievement in the middle of WvW. Especially at a location somewhat infamous for being camped by opposing WvW players. Judging by the responses from most of the PvP/WvW players on these forums not many of them thought it was all that smart either. Without an strong PvE player base this game would almost cease to exist. If you think that the WvW/PvP base can keep this game healthy and making you money you are sadly mistaken. Even if you cannot accept that you are, and have been for a long time completely wrong about what WvWvW is (its PvP with PvE window dressing), you should at least be able to recognize that alienating the PvE base by sticking your finger in their eye this way is counter-productive (long term) to your bottom line.

It is telling to me that at the end of the Molten Facility run there were players camped out on map trying to get one last group in. Tonight on the map chat for LA I saw maybe 1 attempt by people to a group together for AR and there was almost no one outside the entrance to AR – and I am on a very well populated server. If Anet has the stats on the participation in AR they must recognize that they did not succeed this time – and by success I mean players wanting to play their content. LEARN from this Anet.

What’s remarkable about Anet’s intransigence on this is that not only does it kitten off/annoy about 99% of PvE players, from what’ I’ve read, even a healthy portion of the PvP crowd don’t think this is appropriate.

Stormy Dragon.9210:

Excalibur.9748:

No the dungeon is fine. The more I do it the more I feel it’s fine. Just make sure you have 1-2 guardians.

Since the supposed design philosophy of this game is that you’re not supposed to be locked into particular party builds to be successful “Just make sure you have 1-2 guardians” means that the dungeon is not fine.

Exactly! It should not be necessary to have a specific class (and really 2 of them) for a event to be done successfully.

Isende.2607:

Point 1: ArenaNet, you purposely set out to create a game that encourages cooperation, not competition — and it was this which drew many players, among them myself, my husband, and my guild. We love the fact that nodes are set up so that one doesn’t have to worry about someone ninjaing them. We love the fact that it’s considered a normal part of gameplay to help other players, because anyone who tags a mob, gets a chance at loot from it AND gets the kill credit. We love the way you encourage us to rez each other. All these things speak loudly to a spirit of cooperation among your players. For this reason, I fail to understand how it was deemed a good idea to put a limited-time achievement in an environment that a great many of your players actually do not frequent. Given the amount of camping that’s being reported and experienced, what you’ve done is create a situation where it’s “come-slaughter-the-little-pve-bunny” time. People know that we’re easy kills, they know many of us are achievement-minded and will go die over and over and over again, waiting for them to tire of the game. This goes directly against the spirit of cooperation you’ve created. Yeah, I know, it’s WvW — so it’s to be expected people are going to die. But you’re missing the point — we LIKE getting our achievements, and we WILL risk the anger, the frustration, and the increased armor repair costs in the miniscule hope that we can get in there and actually get this achievement.

Point 2: There is a significant difference between the mindset of the PVP-oriented player, and the mindset of the PVE-oriented player. I speak from experience; I started my gaming with FPS. Then, for three years I was a guild leader in WoW on Sargeras — a PVP realm. I dove into the battles, the battlegrounds, the open-world combat. I rode to the rescue, with my trusty compatriots, of my lower-level guildies when they were being griefed. Been there, done that.

Somewhere along the way, I apparently got older. My tastes changed from competition-against-others to competition-against-self. Competition-against-the-game. I learned to rate my abilities by how well I tanked a fight, how well I healed it — how effective I was as a part of a group. How well I knew my skills and abilities in the PVE environment.

But most players can be split between PVP and PVE. And despite what all the love-PVP folk would have you believe — your game is not populated solely by people who love PVP.

Pretty much agree with everything here. I used to do PvP stuff when I was much younger. Now, I don’t particularly find it at all rewarding. Somewhere along the way I grew up and decided tearing down other players for rewards was just obnoxious. Too much like watching everything that’s wrong with our society encapsulated in a game. For me, the cooperative open world game play is what makes this game different, better than other games and worth playing. I would have significantly fewer issues with this game overall if Anet would just admit they screwed up in the first place putting PvE stuff in PvP land and undo the bad decision they made and henceforth NEVER DO IT AGAIN. I haven’t even bothered to try to complete the OS JP since I know it would just be an asinine gank-fest with opposing players camping at the JP killing the solos and smaller groups trying to get the achievement (and probably thinking they are total bad kitten killing a bunch a players that don’t give a dam about WvW/PvP anyway).

Kaaboose.3897:

Shadowtech.5071:

Third phase of Frizz with golems pull and pushes make this dungeon impossible for casual players and you all know it. It’s not fun, challenging, or rewarding. It is downright unfair. Not every has class a good source of stability or condition removal. Nerf the golems pushing and pulling abilities is all thats needed for the dungeon to be good to go.

Someone is probably thinking learn to play/know the mechanics of the dungeon. I just want to say I DO.

Last Boss takes forever to do, their is no reason why it should be so time consuming. Just kitten shorten it?

If I see one more bring guardian/mesmer suggestion I’m going to lose it.

It is FUN for us and you ARE bad and WE know it.
Look I’m sick of people complaining about thoese golem pulls and not learning how to deal with them
Forget stability, Forget dodging Just PREPARE for them.
Don’t stand close to the center of the room because if you do you are ASKING to get pulled into the beams. STAY ON THE OUTSIDE of the room. That way if you get pulled it won’t be into the center and certain doom. Also STAY ahead of the beams and keep moving. If you just want to stand on top of a box with the first low lazer then expect to get pulled down.
Use the second phase (Slow large lazer wall) to get you group together. Stay on the OUTSIDE of the room and stay CLOSE to the the wall moving AWAY from you. If you get pulled and need to make up some distance use swiftness or move a LITTLE closer to the center of the room briefy.
For the final phase (Both Lazers) stay close to the slow moving wall (moving away from you.) When you see the faster lower wall closing in jump up onto a box, and JUMP towards it to fling yourself over it. If you get pulled while doing this you’ll be pulled right over the lazer and be just fine. Get back to the slow moving wall, dpsing on the move as you do.
Just keep following that pattern and you’ll have it done. Even if you’re the only one left alive.

Staying to the outside will not guarantee you the result you insist if will. That’s because the golems, sensibly enough, will take the most direct route toward you – through the center. Nearly every time I’ve been downed its because I’ve been pulled from the outside into the center by the golems. Also, I’m not sure what character you have but I cannot walk backwards fast enough to stay ahead of the golems and continuously attack them. Inevitably, I am either pulled to them or pummeled away from them (either way I can slam into a wall). If there are 2 of them left, then I’m often double pulled, and therefor double stunned and by the time I recover typically slammed by either the short fast wall or the slow tall wall – sometimes I get that really special moment where I’m double-pulled, and then slammed by both walls. Pretty much insta-defeat even for my 23K hp, soldier tough armored, ridiculous healing Ranger. But hey, thanks for the advice.

Wildclaw.6073:

Arrow.4619:

Hard is fine, but the golems on stage 3 in the Frizz encounter are ridiculous. Continuous ongoing invulnerability with about one in 10 shots damaging them, might stacks and auto-attack pummeling, pulls/pushes, stuns from them and the environment.

Also known as the “kite the golems continuously through the lasers to trigger their special abilities” strategy. A highly popular tactic among groups competing for the most wipes in a row title.

Personally I prefer the “have everyone on the same side and kill the last two golems without dying” strategy although it sucks if you want to wipe.

You are assuming you have enough people alive at that point (an iffy proposition) and the right classes who can take the damage, the pulls and the stuns and keep moving oh and you still have to deal with multiple periods of invulnerability since the short laser triggers the invulnerability as well. But hey keep ignoring the fact that you really, really need to have at least 2 guardians, and a combination of mesmers and rangers to actually complete this encounter.

Most of the L2P stuff in this chain is just dumb and obnoxious. So if you got a L2P reply to this post . . . go pound sand.
Completed this twice so far (plus one group just walked away when we couldn’t get past Frizz) and wipes stack up as: 1 on final boss, 30+ so far on Frizz. Hard is fine, but the golems on stage 3 in the Frizz encounter are ridiculous. Continuous ongoing invulnerability with about one in 10 shots damaging them, might stacks and auto-attack pummeling, pulls/pushes, stuns from them and the environment. Hey, Anet why stop there! Why not make them invisible! Or have them lay down traps! Or summon more golems! Anet this doesn’t qualify as challenging, its just silly. Any designer can keep throwing krap on top of more krap but its important to know when to STOP. Get rid of any one of those or simply make them less OP (hey, here’s a thought how about a serious cool down on the invulnerability or the pulls!) and most of the complaints about how tough this dungeon is would go away AND (now this is the important part so pay attention) – lots and lots more people might enjoy it.
You’ve made a dungeon that’s anti-zerker. I get it. We all get it. But you simply took it one step too far and made an anti-zerker dungeon that REQUIRES the group basically consist of a limited number of classes to get through a mid-way boss: Guardian, Mesmer, Ranger. Tone that encounter down and its a solid dungeon. As it is, its a complete once and walk way never to return unless (like me) you’re somewhat mentally unbalanced and willing to spend ridculous amounts of time chasing tiny achievements.

So far having completed it twice the only thing needing a good strong nerf is the golem pull in the fight with Frizz. They pull you into the center at the wrong moment and its instant downed. And they seem to pull a lot and because of the nature of the fight spend way to much time in the center of the room..

Played through just 2 games and in the second noticed that I was fighting the exact same team and that my team always seemed down at least one player in both matches. Both lopsided games and I thought “What the he11 is going on?” and left. Now I know. If I go back it will probably be to be an AFKer and sit through 20 matches for the achievement (but why bother since getting 10 achievements shouldn’t be a problem?).

I’m on TC and I would recommend it. Not all of the temples are always open but usually at least some of them are. All of the world bosses have a decent player presence every time – even the lower level ones.

I generally agree with the OP. This was distracting and poorly thought through. A simpler and more elegant choice would have been better animations regarding his two main actions (resetting the bombs, and exploding them). That, possibly accompanied by some kind of vocal cue (ticking time bomb for resetting the bombs or C screaming "DIIIIIIIIEEEEE! when he’s about blow them up) would have worked much better. It just struck me as lazy to rely on the dinky chat window instead of using more immersive methods that would require more serious coding. Look to the MF and current boss events worldwide for much better ways to do this.

As a PvE thief player I have just one request for Anet: Admit you messed up and develop two sets of skills for the game – one set for PvP/WvWvW and another set for PvE. All of the PvE players, but especially those playing thieves, would really really thank you if you would just stop messing with PvE in an effort to balance perceived PvP/WvWvW issues.

Orpheus.7284:

Einlanzer.1627:

God there is so much misinformation in this thread. The main two are summarized here:

A.) Thieves are not offensively stronger than other classes. In fact, their skills have lower coefficients across the board to compensate for their ability to spam. However, the spamming only affects burst DPS, their sustained DPS is the same as or even slightly weaker than other classes due to the lower coefficients. This is mostly why you see so many Thieves running glass cannon builds, because they have to to play off the only strength the class has – burst DPS. The combination of so-so sustained DPS, very poor attrition, and lack of good thread reduction/damage mitigation makes Thief one of the hardest classes to play in open-world PvE and in dungeons.

B.) Stealth does not reduce threat anymore. Smoke Bomb in the downed state is so brokenly useless in PvE that it’s actually laughable. I have played every class in PvE and the Thief’s downed state is easily the worst for both getting a rally and surviving for enough time to get some assistance. Some others are great (Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer), but all others have skills that are at least situationally useful and can usually do appreciable damage.

A.) CnD and backstab rotation is darn good for a skill that has a 3 second reveal cool down. It’s single target and in many pug setups it’s not practical (mob pushed w/ back against the wall, teammates that don’t know how to manage aggro) That doesn’t mean it’s not one of the highest DPS in the game. Burst means spike damage that can’t be sustained…CnD and backstab rotation can be sustained.

B.) I did not know you what you meant when you initially said threat reduction, now I know you meant reducing aggro. That is up to your team. When you stealth you are allowing your teammates to catch up on the aggro table. It doesn’t necessarily reset you on the aggro table like it once did, but it still serves its purpose.

Don’t really agree the first comment in the nested quote above. The second poster has it right. Focus on the one aspect of a thief that Anet hasn’t nerfed yet: initiative. You can readily spam CnD + #1 attack chain on a d/d thief and do an “ongoing spike” that works quite well in PvE. I routinely chew through most veterans without being minus any hit points (with one or two notable exemptions – namely karka at the end of the fight using d/d. My experience is that d/d thief dps in PvE is very strong. This is the only class I’ve played that I can routinely one or two hit most normal mobs.

The second comment in the nested quote above I agree with. The thief now has a pretty kitten poor set of downed skills. The best way out of a downed state for a thief is to find a poor health normal mob and kill it to rally. Smoke Bomb was a crappy skill . . . now its just a not very funny joke (MESSAGE TO ANET: Fix the dam skill already! Turn it into something kitten usefull!).

I do agree with some other posters – thief has a steep learning curve and really come into their own at fairly high levels. Good news is if you can play a thief well the other classes seem easy in comparison (at least that’s been my experience so far).

Bonafides: I play only PvE and my level 80 thief has about 400 extra skill points (that’s after buying all the skills spending about 200+ points on the mystic forge). And I don’t run a glass cannon build.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Once you are downed, the best way is to rally by killing something – so leave one of the mobs you are fighting on low health and use that as rally fodder to damage when you get downed.

I find the best way though is not to get downed in the first place.

Watch your health carefully and try to not fight mobs above your level (e.g., don’t fight mobs above level 28). As soon as you fight mobs a few levels higher they hit much harder.

Keep your gear up to date also – running around in level 28 with only level 15 or level 20 armour/weapons/trinkets will see you die a lot more than you should. Keep weapons, armour and trinkets within 5 or so levels. Heart merchants often sell upgrades to trinkets, weapons and armour – buy them, equip them and fight mobs at or below your level.

Generally the best option for thieves is the first one he outlined. You will get downed so the rest of his advice, while it may be sound, isn’t really helpful once you get downed. From what I can tell thieves have the worst downed skill bar. The t-port is nice but has a bad cooldown and a short range and you cave really hideous camera angles on using it at times. The stealth is almost worthless UNLESS you have a target you can kill and then it gives you a mediocre damage spike if you have Hidden Killer(?). The skill really should be a long (5+ seconds) invisibility/smoke screen (exit on heal or attack) instead of the worthless POS it is now.

I’ve ran into this bug recently as well – it has not killed me yet but I think it may be related to another bug I’ve ran into (I did loop fall twice and that almost killed me). I recently tried to complete the Diving Master. Went about it very methodically using a list from the wiki, doing each jump (even some I know I’d done previously) and checking it off the list. Several times I jumped and occasionally I would have armor and weapons not return when the jump completed. Sometimes it lagged by only a handful of seconds but once or twice I got out of the water in my diving suit and wandered around. I also distinctly remember that at least once I looped back to the top of the jump and fell again. I noticed that when I had finally checked all of the dives off, I had been credited with 35 dives. According to the wiki the maximum number of dives is 36 (even though it says 37). My problem is that don’t remember which dive looped on me and even then, I’m not sure that’s the dive I didn’t get credit for since I had more than one glitch.

I don’t use steal much either. My thief’s not specifically built to take advantage of Steal so I think that is part of the reason I tend to ignore it. But the other part of the reason is that frankly the few times I’ve tried it I wasn’t impressed with the ability I got. Its a one off skill with a long cooldown that may or may not be effective but robs me of my attack bar until I use it. And using it seems to pull me out of the flow of a fight. I could be hitting something/someone three times, cause bleeding or poisoning or vulnerability, or kiting it or dodging blows coming from more than one direction but instead I’m playing around with the gunk or whatever I’ve stolen. Steal just isn’t the Thief class specific mechanic I care about and really like – that would be Initiative. I will admit that if I could just use the skill as a shadowstep type teleport with say 1-2 seconds of stealth at the end I probably would use it far more often. Bottom line is that whatever becomes the new skill has to beat my using the number 2,3, or 5 skills on my D/D thief and I have no faith that will be the case.

Runiir.6425:

Or, play smart and balance out toughness and vitality.
Personally I think if someone wears nothing but bezerker gear the boss should target them first for the simple fact they obviously are squishy. s for people who just want large numbers? Well, better get used to kiting and tanking for those large numbers than…bosses should have a smarter AI that tries to eliminate the weakest links first…the weakest links are always the bezerker builds as they get hit twice and go down.

This is the core of the problem I think: “Squishy” characters never get targeted first over “Hard” characters or so it seems. Zerker gear is by far the most pricey due to demand, which to me indicates Anet needs to consider revisiting the way “threat” is calculated so that other gear/builds become more valued. Armor that doesn’t provide additional protection through toughness or hit points but does maximize your damage should have a significant downside. Zerkers should be target #1 for Veterans and Champions – spend some time dodging and kiting just to get your hits in and maybe that Knight’s or Valkyrie gear won’t seems so second rate. Open the game up for more than one play style.

Some people really don’t give a kitten about wielding a legendary. Personally, I think legendary weapons are a not very funny joke on Anet customers. Much work for zero reward. I get that they are selling self esteem but I don’t need it. What I find annoying however, is that as a completionist I WILL NEVER GET A SIMPLE ACHIEVEMENT (MAP COMPLETION) THAT IS 100% PvE NOT PvP because Anet made a dumb decision.

I understand your desire to fix this but really the fix is simple: Separate WvWvW/PvP from the PvE entirely. Have two skill sets not one so PvE don’t get punished by WvW “sponsored” nerfs., don’t require WvW for completion of basic achievements like exploration, etc. etc.

The longer I play this game the more convinced I am that Anet just made a very bad decision with trying to integrate WvWvW into PvE. Trying to fix it isn’t the answer – they just need to undo it. I would trade all of the “boosts” I supposedly get from WvWvW for the simple ability to get 100% map completion without having to visit “Zergland” ever again.

Everyone I’ve spoken to says its 0%. That seems wrong to me as I remember getting magic (blues/greens) before I added any gear that added magic find %. So, what is the base magic find percentage?

I’d sell it to some “sucker” who wants to put in the time grinding for all the materials/achievements so they can have something that “looks cool” but is no better than an exotic. One born every minute . . .

JohnLShannonhouse.1820:

Ybrahim.2084:

I’ve seen monsters respawn right after I’ve killed them, so the timers are often 30 seconds or less.

I think the timer is independent of kill time. I have seen this as well, but after defeating the respawn, nothing appear again. So, for example, an enemy on a 100s timer:
9:00:00 – repsawn if defeated
9:01:40 – repsawn if defeated
9:03:20 – repsawn if defeated

If you defeat it at 9:01:35, it respawns right away. If you defeat the second at 9:02:15, you don’t see the next enemy for 65 seconds. If, on the other hand, you defeated it at 9:01:45, you would not see another enemy for 95 seconds. This is consistent with my experiences in almost every non-dynamic event part of the game.

I did notice the Inquest seem to respawn much faster, as Jeff confirmed early in the thread.

I think you’ve hit on the core of the respawn problem and I’ve noticed it particularly in the level 80 areas: Respawn timers completely unlinked to the actual defeat of the monster. So many times I’ve killed something to literally watch it respawn in the exact same location less than a handful of seconds later. Annoying and ridiculous. There needs to be some kind of link between the defeat of an opponent and the length of time before the enemy respawns – for example in the above they would simply have something like:

9:00:00 – repsawn in +80 if defeated
9:01:40 – repsawn in +80 if defeated
9:03:20 – repsawn in +80 if defeated

My advice is to use the forums and the wiki and anyone willing to help and you can get through the personal story missions.

Your complaint about personal story rewards I agree with but I don’t think that is really the problem here. As an aside: Seriously Anet would it be the end of the world to give players soulbound rares for completing certain steps in the personal story line arc instead of crappy blues interspersed with the occasional greens that the player will only sell and not use?

I finished all of the personal story line (except the end) solo with a thief using dagger/dagger and pistol/pistol (no change in weapon sets btw but I typically entered all the stories with at least +5 levels). Some of the personal missions are a significant challenge: Claw Island and the Mouth of Z come to mind. But I’m used to playing a GW “thief type” since in GW1 my main character was an Assassin and the same rules sort of apply (move and keep moving unless you’re soloing one or two opponents). I’ve found that sometimes its just a strategy issue that stymies you – for the Mouth of Z I kept wiping because all of my support got wiped and I could not out dps him solo. So eventually I just pulled all of the npcs to one side, started the combat and then moved around behind him and dagger/dagger 5-1’d him to death while he stayed focused on the npcs. When he turned on me I backed off and let the npcs beat on him until he refocused on them. I just needed to adjust my tactics for that situation.

Regarding ease of some sections with tank class verses other classes: With my Thief I can solo any veteran by just standing toe-to-toe and hitting the dagger/dagger 5-1 combo while throwing in an occasional 3. Karka are the exceptions – I can come close with young karka veterans but its just not worth the trouble (the rewards in GW2 for defeating a veteran or champion suck) . And I can solo and some champions with my thief. However, I have found it significantly “easier” to solo champions with my Ranger. The same isn’t true for veterans as the Ranger’s lower dps makes it more of a grind to take them out. However I just think that’s the price you pay for not being able to tank at least somewhat and you just have to adjust.

Again, I think its just a matter of using other resources (wiki, forum, friends) to help you adjust what you are doing and you’ll succeed.

Yeah. They should have the possibility of dropping from Veterans or Champions in PvE.

Dredlockrasta.8269:

It’s threads like these that make me laugh. People getting legendaries just to sit around in LA and stroke their Epeen, crying about exploring WvW being part of the crafting.

You make me laugh. I have zero interest in crafting a Legendary weapon. That is unless Anet makes them something much more than just the same as an Exotic weapon with a different skin. Anet puts way too much emphasis on players pursuing appearances rather than character accomplishments and improvements .

WvW should not be part of the map completion. This is just a bad decision on Anet’s part. No need to justify why it isn’t appropriate to include “the mists” in the world Explorer title. It isn’t appropriate because many PvE players do not want to play PvP. In spite of what other posters have maintained, WvW is PvP. Generally there are PvE and PvP players – some do both, but many do not. It alienates PvE players to be forced to play the game in a manner they do not want to play the game in order to reach a relatively basic achievement. I haven’t been into PvP since I got out of high school (maybe college – lets just say that was a long time ago) and to say the least it irks me to have to go to WvW in order to get the full Explorer title. I’m annoyed that I cannot simply focus on playing the game in manner I want to play it without worrying about being jumped by a bunch of PvP zergs or having to develop a “team” to go take someone’s “castle or keep or waypoint or whatever” or to lurk and leach off a team that is doing that. I think Anet needs change this situation by:

1) Removing WvW from the Explorer/Map Completion title; or
2) Allow players to enter the WvzW environment as an “Explorer” – monsters could hit you, players could not, etc.; or
3) Introduce an “Armistice Day” each year in which the the WvW maps become PvE maps and everyone can go everywhere.

My suspicion is that if Anet were to implement option 3 the flood of players into WvW will tell them exactly how questionable their initial decision was. Honestly, this isn’t enough to make me “rage quit” the game, but it truly annoys me and mars and otherwise very good game.

Fred Fargone.3127:

I think there are two versions of Orr: The one super easy that me and several other players share, and one nightmare version that everyone who complains goes to.

I don’t get it. Die? In Orr? Sure, if you go afk in a boss fight.
It’s easy to stroll around Orr, the spawnrate isn’t too fast, the mobs aren’t some immortal beings with DPS over nine thousand… I don’t get it, where is all this complaining coming from?

And no, I don’t play some super tough class, in fact, I play a squishy elementalist. And no, I haven’t min-maxed my skills, don’t pay attention to gear or care about my traits. In fact, my gear is just MF since stuff dies so easily I might as well use the little bonus for rarer loot. And half the time I’m not even paying attention to the game, just watching some Anime or something from my second screen. While running around.

Could someone crank up the difficulty of Orr a bit?

Cute piece of trolling there Fred. No, Fred, Orr is not so easy to go through you can watch something on one screen while playing on another. I’ve completed it largely solo (94% world completion at this point) with my Thief. Difficult, challenging and occasionally very frustrating but an accomplishment. The only part of my personal story I have left is the very end in Arah and I finished my personal story to this point entirely solo. I only rarely go back to Orr and when I do its to grind for exp or maybe look for some partners for the final part of my personal story (no luck on that yet). Some of the Temple events are worth the trip for end loot, and it is a good for ancient wood and Ori but that is about it. You certainly can’t complete your dailies there. At this point I only really only go there to grind grind grind . . . because that is all the place is . . . one big grind.

The two major problems I see are are the same as other posters have noted:
1) The respawn rate is so ludicrously short/fast/quick; and
2) Nothing stays uncontested without at least 1 player standing continuous watch.

For players to be willing to return to the Cursed Shore/Orr generally in large numbers and stay for any length of time, the devs need to ratchet down the respawn rate to something slightly closer to sane and/or either crank up the AI on the “good guy” defenders or lower the undead counter assault rates on the waypoints. Players actions need to have an impact that lasts longer than 5-10 minutes.

I typically do my daily achievements and materials farming on the Cove (once I figured out which skill to use to neutralize the OP Karka range attack) and Frostgorge. Either are infinitely preferable to Orr for farming exp, mats, $ and karma.

Skill points are a very underutilized/misused concept in the game. The core issue is that GW2 assumes players will be willing to spend amazing amounts of skill points for appearances sake (legendary weapons are a key example of this). Perhaps I’m just a little to old for that sort of idea to be even remotely attractive. “Appearance” and the “appearance of status” is relatively meaningless to me and objectively, fairly meaningless within the game. Skill points on the other hand take time and effort to gather, and beyond buying all of the various skills available to your character, generally either gather dust or are wasted on “buying” things other than skills for appearances sake. I’d like to suggest that skill points should be used to BUY SKILLS.

It seems to me there is no reason why skills shouldn’t have levels that could be purchased, with relatively steep steps to buy them up. The improvement at each level would not have to be tremendous to still be attractive. An example of what I’m talking about:

Hide In Shadows
1 pt for Level 1 = base skill
+3 pts for Level 2 = +10% healing
+6 pts for Level 3 = +1 second of regeneration
+10 points for Level 4 = +1 second of invisibility
+30 points for Level 5 = +1 second of regeneration and invisibility
———————————-
50 points total costs for Level 5

Summon Druid Spirit
30 pts for Level 1 = base skill
+50 pts for Level 2 = +10% healing, damage
+80 pts for Level 3 = -30 seconds recharge time
+120 pts for Level 4 = +30 seconds on summon length
+200 points for Level 5 = Summoned Oakheart is a Veteran
--————————————-
480 points total cost for Level 5

It might seem unlikely someone would save enough points up buy a Level 5 Summon Druid Spirit, but I personally prefer that than spending 200 points on a “Legendary” weapon cause its an achievement and it “looks cool” (or “sick” or “bad” or whatever the current phrase is — I guess I really am getting old. I can absolutely assure you that I would gladly spend 50 points bringing 2-3 different core skills I like up to Level 5.

Still definitely not fixed. Missing the pattern on the left (player’s perspective). Used pattern from video. Did not work. Put stones on all pads. Removed stones that did not belonged got the left torch to light. Pattern on the right doesn’t seem to work at all.