Guild Wars 2

Not only should Larcenous Strike steal 2 stacks of boons, but thieves should have a whole lot more boon stealing. Shadow Strike should steal boons, scorpion wire should steal boons, Shadow Trap should steal boons, Infiltraitor’s arrow should steal boons, Tow Line should steal boons, Infiltraitor’s Signet should steal boons, Ice Drake Venom should steal boons, and finally there needs to be boon stealing in Acrobatics.

Currently, the ability to steal boons isn’t a class mechanic as much as it is an obscure factoid about a skill or two. Boon stealing on thieves should be in so many places that nearly any build can comfortably have some.

Another little hint: there’s chests hidden about the map. If you open those, they also contain ley-line crystals.

That’s actually how I get most of mine. I have a daily flax farm route that goes past 3 of them, and after I do it with every toon, I suddenly have a lot of ley-line crystals. So much I actually have a surplus of sparks now.

I don’t mind the minigames. I mind how poorly tuned a lot of them are, but the games themselves are fine. I get the feeling a lot of the QQ will go away once they are tuned better.

In general… no. In specifics…

#1: Dragonhunter doesn’t mesh well with Guardian’s core feature. If you want to keep instantaneous virtues, supporting boons, and more flexibility in your build, you can go core Guardian and not many will bat an eye.

#2: The Scrapper is a mixed bag, having an excellent weapon but meh utilities and traits. If you aren’t using the hammer, then there’s little reason to be a scrapper. Mostly condi sets, though.

#3: The Druid is loaded with group support and all, but if you ever find yourself by yourself, you’ll want to be running core ranger.

#4: Tempest is a mixed bag. Though personally I love the stunbreakds and overloads it gives, there’s still plenty reason to go into other trait lines. Not every environment is overload friendly, as you’ll learn eventually.

#5: I don’t play berserker, but I hear this is basically a condi heavy spec, so it isn’t always the best to run it.

#6: You gotta go reaper.

#7: You gotta go chronomancer

#8: You gotta go daredevil.

#9: you gotta go herald.

I don’t know the statistics, but there’s a pretty good chance that Reddit has more users than the official forums do.

Yeah, the OP kicked someone when they are down.

1 Reaper
1 Chronomancer
1 Daredevil
1 Herald
1 Druid
1 Tempest
1 Dragonhunter

My motivation was simple: Most of these specs are fairly obvious power creep, and I liked playing around with them. Currently I’m working on getting the themed ascended weapons for all of them.

Hardest one was the daredevil, because I did that one before the requirements were changed from 400 to 250. Yep, nothing quite like scouring through tangled depths the first time as a zerker thief.

Cyninja.2954:

Okay, so you decide to bring in points to this topic which were never part of it just so you can complain and moan.

No, my comlpaint is that you are wrong about fractals. Fractals are literally not possible without agony resistance unless the group you are playing with keeps ressurecting you (meaning they are covering for you not having ar). The guarnateed 100% agony damage makes sure of that.

It was part of the topic, is what I am saying. Likewise, your complaint is that I was right about fractals in the past and my point about it makes sense, but now because instabilities have changed my point… doesn’t make sense? Yeah, nitpicking. You’re distracting from the point.

Cyninja.2954:

Please use some of that common sense yourself when replying. I stated that you are using unknown future events in your arguments, now you call my train of thought a paradox. Also, no one expected ascended tier of gear until arenanet added it. Going by past experiences, it’s not far off to expect new tiers of gear.

You are the one who brought up unknown future events. I responded by saying that, in your claim that the devs saying ascended being a requirement doesn’t count because “it isn’t the true end of the raid”, it means that you have accepted the devs want ascended to be a requirement in raids, there is no ambiguity in that statement, and that it is only by technicality that you can even claim that ascended currently isn’t required in a raid. This, of course, is necessarily contradictory to what you said before, about the devs never saying that ascended was a requirement.

What you did is you doubled back, tried to come up with two points of attack, and failed to realize that they canceled each other out. Now you don’t have a point. You’re just being difficult. You can’t take it back, either.

Cyninja.2954:

The video was ment to show people that there is no reason to fret and obsess over ascended gear. You’ve taken this idea and keep trying to pervert it. What the hell is wrong with you? Provoked the beast? You seem very obsessed with yourself.

So, this topic was about the debate over the necessity of ascended and exotics. So all of that stuff you said above about me bringing in something unrelated? Utter bullkitten.

Cyninja.2954:

So him being a non-native speaker allows you to be condescneding towards him and a general a*** in this topic? Okay.

Not condescending. Literal. I am literally not sure he understand what I am writing.

Cyninja.2954:

Is this your way of saying:“Sorry, I am not omniscent and stand corrected on this point.”

Apology accepted.

Not quite. You are asserting I am lying. I am saying I was wrong. There’s a big difference between the two, in that one is evil and the other is unfortunate. I will apologize for being wrong, but your claims about me being a liar are still unfounded.

Cyninja.2954:

No, berserker trinkets are easily obtained via (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_trinket):
- rings – pristine fractal relics – 0 gold (takes about 1 week for both if you get unlucky and can only do low level dailies)
- accessoires – guild commendations +5 gold each – 10 gold total (takes a bit longer, about 3-4 weeks of running guild missions)
- amulet – 30 laurels (20 laurels and 250 wvw badges)- 0 gold
- backpiece – about 80-100g

The funny thing is, the first thing I said was only the rings were easily obtainable, and that the amulets and accessories took forever to obtain. You’re basically quoting me to myself word for word to say that I am saying that I am wrong. The “cost” is the large amount of time you need to wait before getting the items.

Cyninja.2954:

That doesn’t even account for Sinister trinkets (best in slot condition damage) which are all almost completely achievement bound or via bandit crests from farming 2-3 hours of SW. Again, not that big a deal.

Actually no. Sinister trinkets aren’t the best for condition damage. Vipers are. It is just that the only place to get Viper’s Trinkets is in raids.

Cyninja.2954:

I’m not moaning about you bringing up weapons. I’m questioning how you added weapons in to strength a weak point. Yes, ascended weapons are expensive IF you build them (no where near as armor) and are literally the ONLY expensive item you currently need for a decent setup. That’s not even considering alternative methods of getting them which will occur over time if you play the appropriate parts of the game.

Well, it is quite simple: it is part of the budget package. If you’ve ever glanced at the spreadsheet for ascended vs. exotic damage, the biggest category (and likewise, the one that everyone recommends) is to have ascended trinkets and weapons. This combo hits that 10% mark of increased damage, and thus it serves as the practical difference between ascended and exotic. Anything less is, well, unsubstantial.

It is here that you get the cost of the whole thing: gold cost of the weapon set and backpack plus the time gate behind the weapon recipes + rings + amulet + trinkets. Overall, it is a ton of laurels, a ton of accommodations, and depending on class a ton of gold.

Cyninja.2954:

I’m done arguing with you. I thought the video was very infromative and could be of interest to people in general who are interested in raiding in this game. Obviously there always has to be some sob to come around and nitpick/spoil the fun just to feed his ego.

Now this is the most self important dump you’ve taken in this thread. Most recently you’ve admitted that this thread was made as part of an argument after adamantly denying it and calling me evil for bring it up, said your opinion was second to word of god, proclaimed a series of value judgements and and outright false information as fact, tout yourself as morally superior for letting other people make decisions while being intolerant of different decisions, and declare anyone who disagrees with you as nonexistent. There’s a term for this. Psychological Projection. You demonstratively have a gigantic ego, and because of this you see everyone else not adhering to your own self importance as being egotistical.

If you want my advice, here it is: You have ears. Use them. Listen to the video as well as watch it. Then you won’t come off as crazy when your source outwardly disagrees with you.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Cherry Picking.

Not at all.

All it is.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Yes, you did.

" They are dying way earlier due to several mistakes like … being too slow with cc (a.k.a. mouse klicking spells)"

Yes, it is an example. It must not be the fact. It could also be that the player is having disseminated sclerosis and is therefore not able to press/klick fast enough.

Dude, just admit that you brought it up, and you were wrong to do so. Is that really so hard?

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

And now you are saying that it only counts when you say it counts. Mouse clicking doesn’t lead to failure, except in the cases where it does lead to failure. Sounds to me like the problem isn’t actually mouse clicking at all.

Cherry picking. I could also say reaction time. There are many players out there who aren’t fast enough = lack of skill in the game. Sometimes you can watch ppl dying slowly and laugh your a_ss off because it’s hella funny how slow they are moving/dodging w/e – and yes, it’s always the lag.

You have no idea what cherry picking is. “Cherry picking” is when you choose specific points of data to pre-fit an assumption, I.E. only focusing on vale guardian when the raid has more than that. Pointing out that your statements contradict isn’t cherry picking, unless you have a series of utterly random posts and I deliberate select the ones that are contradictory to others. Though if you have a series of utterly random posts you have a bigger problem… Anyway, “reaction time” is a better determinant. “Fine motor control” would be a good definition as well.

Regardless, this part of the discussion is a dead end. Mostly because I don’t like watching people fail.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

And after all that, it has nothing to deal with an enrage timer encouraging risky behavior.

Still the majority of suffering people aren’t aiming for the enrage timer. Get over it!

The problem doesn’t go away just because you want it to.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

“Practice” doesn’t change the issue. You still have to play risky to maximize DPS. Having exotic gear will kitten your performance.

No, your mechanical performance doesn’t depend on the exotics as KING has proven. Is it harder in exotics? Yes. Is it impossible in exotics? No. Have the mechanics changed while you are using exotics? No, absolutely not.

Your mechanical performance gets more room for error when you have ascended. KING didn’t disprove that at all. In fact, it is recommended for that very reason.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

If you are constantly dying to mechanical problems and raid mechanics (many of which are OHKOs), then prolonging how much you are exposed to these problems prolongs how likely it is you will die. I.E. the likelyhood that 4 players will miss the circle grows exponentially the longer the fight becomes.

See again, this is no university science course. I am sure you went through it, so did I but this is a gaming forum. Stop putting stupid game content to the next level. Ofc the group of 8 will wipe due to the likelyhood of anything there some day in infinity. But then we need the numbers and these are so little when I expect such a group being in TS and there are technically 8 tanks shouting “GREEN!” and all could be able to run into it at the same time cuz it doesn’t matter who is pulling the VG around.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Vale Guardian is the worst example here. Let me elaborate on the better example: as you fight Sabetha, the platform you are on will take damage. Slowly, but it will accumulate. If you decide that DPS means nothing and go full tank, you won’t be able to kill the minions that cause damage to the platform, and thus it will cause you to fail.

VG is the right example here. Actually we don’t need to speak about the other two in the first place because it’s the VG the majority has problems with. And additionally, I don’t want my example taken to the extent. It was just a simple thought about the fact that you have to keep pressure on players otherwise this content will fall down to fractals and dungeons.

VG isn’t the raid. If an enrage timer is necessary to prevent a full tank group against only one of the bosses, then that just means that the boss isn’t super well designed, while the other ones are. Even then, I’d still see failure as something that can happen in a full tank squad.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’ve played other games with raids, and the failure mechanic isn’t always a hard timer. Back in City of Heroes, there was practically a different failure mechanic for each boss in their raids. Sometimes adds could accumulate too quickly, sometimes boss regen would grow too high and you couldn’t out-damage it anymore… one of my favorites was a boss that would create damage patches that did high piercing damage (that is, damage that ignored toughness), and as the fight went on, more and more of these patches of start appearing. If that mechanic was adapted to a raid, after awhile the patches would consume the world and you’d all die.
I’m fine with there being a soft timer like that, because it gives you multiple means of managing the difficulties of the boss. But a hard enrage timer is the worst way to do things. It removes flexibility instead of encouraging it.

This discussion isn’t about a timer, sry. I won’t take this up. It’s about exotics and ascended and both gears have proven to not come in conflict with the timer if the mechanics are well executed.

But they haven’t been proven at all. KING just showed that if you have a really good group that the timer is extremely tight, and then recommends that you should go with Ascended to start with anyway. The ticking clock on Sabetha and Gorseval themselves are enough to make Ascended a requirement for any practical purpose.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The timer does play a role. It forces particular builds and strategies to maximize DPS, because otherwise the timer will force a failure. Ascended gear directly affects DPS, and since DPS is pertinent to the timer, ergo the timer is an argument against exotics.

No, it doesn’t. And the pressure isn’t put by the asc gear, the pressure is put by stats because you cannot change condi or zerk exotic gear into nomads asc gear. And overall the gameplay is way more important.

You just said that the timer prevents a bunch of nomad guardians. Therefore, it is removing a passive strategy, and encouraging one that forces maximum DPS. Stay consistent now. While this means a load more for gear prefixes, ascended is just yet another outlet for increasing DPS. Much like build and rune choices.

Vinceman.4572:

KING has proven it: Exotics plus a good execution doens’t make asc gear necessary.

This doesn’t make sense. I’m assuming that you mean “Exotics plus a good execution means that ascended gear isn’t necessary”. But it doesn’t. It just means that you can barely power through in the more extreme circumstances, to which may players are not capable of doing. For any practical purpose, Ascended is a requirement. At least the weapons and trinkets are. This is encouraged by both Deroir and the developers.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

My point here is that you completely misunderstood what I said. You still aren’t understanding what I am saying. I’ve said countless times that there is no “magic”.

Look, I’m not going to lie: this discussion isn’t productive. Right now, all you are doing is taking each individual quote, then posting whatever retort that comes to mind regardless if it is relevant (or even rational). When I say things, I’m not even sure you understand them.

Because you haven’t had any valued point so far.

You say: Ascended gear is necessary for raids.

KING, NoTrigger, Cyninja are saying: Ascended gear is not necessary for raids at all.

I mean someone is wrong here and since we have a video proof of our hypothesis, it’s not us who are wrong.

Your video itself says that you shouldn’t try what the video did, and should have ascended. It literally disproves itself. You’re whole case is “ignore what he says, thinks, and his advice based on his experiences regarding this content, and just look! He beat it!”, and you are adamant about ignoring that contradiction. You’re spending your whole time championing around a video while anyone with a sense of reason would look back and laugh at how crazy you are being.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

So if he is a better player than many others will ever be, that implies that many others wouldn’t be able to clear the content in exotics. Dude, logic isn’t just some verbal trickery invented by old guys. It is actually a useful tool to for the betterment of society.

First of all, we are not in a university science course, this is an international gaming forum. I will come to that later again.
To the exotics: Maybe some won’t and you know why? Because they are bad players. I bet, unfortunately I cannot prove this, the players that cannot beat the raid in exotics cannot beat the raid in ascended as well. This conclusion is made by the simple fact I gave earlier: They don’t die to the timer, they die to random kitten they aren’t capable of denying.

So you’re whole point is that anyone who doesn’t fit into your assertion by default doesn’t count? I’m going to be frank, I’m not even sure what you are arguing for. You’ve gone so far into contradiction and nonsense that if I put you into a box I wouldn’t be certain if you were alive or dead. I know exactly what I am arguing: KING clearing is raid in exotic gear is of no comfort to the pressures to get ascended gear. It doesn’t resolve the “debate” in any sense.

Your only defense now is to parody coherent thought?

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Maybe you’ve missed it, but “can” does not mean practical, worthwhile, accessible, or reliable. It means that leet players can beat content with a handicap. See: nude runs. Hell, even fractals only require ascended for agony resistance. “Can” is the most worthless of qualifiers, and is of no comfort to the casual crowd.

No university science course, gaming forum! Can simply means possible. You, me, he, she, it can do et. Nothing more.
That’s it. Mike can do it in exotics. Perry cannot. Why is that so? Cuz Mike is the better gamer, Perry is a loser. End of story.

And therefore, ascended becomes more and more of a requirement.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Cherry picking again.

Ha ha ha! You came with numbers. So I reflected it and now it is cherry picking? Well, this is how to argue, I understand.

This is pathetic. The only response you have to anything is “hey, numbers and numbers”. It doesn’t work like that.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Yes, you did. You said that for raids, there is a right way to do things, and a wrong way to do things.

Nope, I just said, that there are things that are obviously wrong, like rifle warrior and stuff like this where every intelligent player who is able to read traits and abilities must know that he is doing crap. Away from that there are many builds and abilities that will lead to success.

I just quoted you when you said it. Have the least bit of shame and admit you were mistaken.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You also said that the only reason why people can ram their head against the raid wall and not progress is that they aren’t doing it right.

And? Isn’t that right? People are weekly clearing these raids with ease. So the others who aren’t able must do something wrong or they are bad.

Technically it is. “Not doing it right”, of course, includes not having ascended gear.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Now you’re going off on some random tangent about how the thing you disagreed with somehow argues for exotic gear (which it doesn’t. Ascended gear would mean more leeway and more build diversity, so yay ascended!), and are forgetting that for many raids are an insurmountable wall that leaves them perplexed and with no idea how to improve or get better. The whole “10 hours not succeeding” thing is disproof of skill being a sole deciding factor, as after that much practice and experience a person would have all the skill they needed.

No, not at all. You are really believing that? There are so many players out there for being best examples. I’ve seen so many players that were taught to do so or so and till today they are not able to improve their gameplay. Not everyone on this planet is intelligent. We are not equal.
Otherwise people that are playing 20 years of soccer or doing any other sports should be able to achieve the gold medal. This is truely not the case for an obvious reason: They are lacking skill or if they aren’t lacking skill they are missing the (emotional) intelligence bring it on the table.

Let me put it this way: imagine there is a swordfight between two samurai. One has a sword. The other has a cardboard tube. Lets say they fight a third samurai, equally skilled. The guy with a cardboard tube, well, he’s pretty mush screwed, no matter how skillfully he can manipulate that cardboard tube.

Your build and your gear, those are things that are given before-hand. They don’t actually affect your overall performance in play. You can skillfully evade very attack in exotic knight gear with nomad runes, but at the end of the day you’re fighting with a cardboard tube.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You’ve completely missed the point: there is no guiding hand that will suddenly give you this knowledge. This will leave you on a localized maximum performance hill that is insubstantial to complete the content. Ascended gear increases the height of this hill, allowing you to complete content that you couldn’t complete previously.

Nope, ascended gear doesn’t allow you to complete content thant you couldn’t complete previously. You can even see this in lower content: I’ve guided so many peeps through the city. With legendaries and ascended stuff. When it came to Lupicus they constantly wiped and the place was covered with their bodies while I was soloing it. And don’t forget: This content is easier as raids. So, no. Ascended just make it a bit easier but if there is content you cannot complete in exotics, you won’t be able to do so in asc. (The agony of fractals not mentioned here because it is a mechanic that has nothing to do with.)

Yes, it does. It provides 10% budget, 12% full invested additional damage, as well as 3% extra armor. Comparing two groups, one full ascended and one full exotic, the full ascended group can get upwards of a full minute of extra time. So if you are an ascended team, every victory with sub one minute on the clock would’ve failed, and if you are an exotic team then every failure at sub 10% HP would’ve been a success.

If players are making incremental gains towards victory via practice, then ascended gives you that victory sooner.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

And your teammates, who are equally failing, are supposed to know this how? If you test multiple things and still fail, how are you sure that you’ve even done better? It also has a lot to deal with exotics. See local maximum above.

You know it via communication and you know it via the health bar of the boss. If you are good at troubleshooting, you can minimize mistakes and maximize dps. It has nothing to do with exotics in first place because ppl wiping due to mistakes not to gear.

No. The knowledge doesn’t spontaneously erupt because you can type.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

So… you spend the previous two quotes talking about how you should inch incrementally toward getting higher DPS (in spite of having no capability of testing that), then say you don’t need to do the things that would allow you to inch forward.

You completely misread my words. I said you don’t need to do rotation test yourself. You can already watch them on YT. While you are struggling with raids and others not, it means that some have beaten the encounters. You can gain a lot out of that or you don’t. It’s a personal thing but if you don’t succeed and you haven’t tried sources that are accessible don’t expect people to be nice in the forums or being on your side of the argument.
And yes, my point is still standing. Try everything you can to maximize your dps. If you need proper rotation management, do so. If you think you need ascended armor, get it. But that is your personal need and in this case certainly not the one of others.

But emulating what is done for DPS rotations on videos is risky behavior that will get you killed. These max DPS rotations on youtube videos aren’t playing it safe.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

So you are supposed to incrementally step forward, but not use the tools to do that, but then you don’t need to? Anyway, the point is that, since you yourself failed to conceptualize DPS in a debate related to DPS, that other people will also fail to conceptualize DPS properly, and thus will not improve in a meaningful way, as that information is not obvious. Thus, the advantages that Ascended gives become more and more necessary the less leet you are.

I don’t need the tools to do by myself because I am not in the elite range. So I don’t need the PvP-Golem, I don’t need the dmg numbers of the chat and I don’t need a timer. The good thing is, that if I am not on the front, there are players that were doin it for me, so I can be happy and watch some perfect/proper rotations like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2_S4ubeX7s
If I am not dumb I just need such a video of a player who has beaten the content and I will be able to adapt many things if mines aren’t better (which I would highly doubt here because I am no speedrunner, but NoTrigger is). If DnT is not your optimal choice, take an SC revenant or vC. Or better: Compare their playstyles.
Are you able to adapt the rotations, traits and build to100%? I doubt it, but if you can, you can talk about the difference between exotics and ascended.

You know, I’ve made video guides on things myself. For City of Heroes, mostly. They all suffer form the same issue: nobody really watches them. That video you linked has 4k views. That is a whole lot less than how many players there are in the game.

It is a fairly common problem: Ignorance of a subject also means ignorance of ignorance of that subject. For example, given the whole “big numbers” thing. If a person doesn’t conceptualize DPS properly, then they won’t know that they are missing something when they go for high numbers instead of fast ones. Since they think they know what they need to, they don’t bother to go look it up. And thus, any failure must be your teammates fault, because they know they’re doing good DPS. It is a self reinforcing problem.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

To be fair, the benefits of alacrity on teammates are even less obvious than outright DPS calculations. I’ve been on teams in dungeons countless times where the self-appointed elitist of the group would complain about the wrong things. Heck, every time I try to organize King of the Jungle I have to deal with at least one know-it-all who will fight tooth and nail against the accepted and time tested methods that work. After all, it isn’t like the correct choice is obvious or something that you can come across after several hours of practice.

Sry, but the dps increase with a chronomancer with continuum split compared to a mesmer without is huge. This is one of the main reasons why you are bringing a mesmer within the raid.

Um.. you didn’t say continuum split. You said alacrity.

And now you are shifting to dungeons which makes no sense at all. I must not do it but you are allowed to argue like this? Come on, be fair and in this case you are absolutely wrong.

You’re distracting from the point. It isn’t about the setting, it is about the people: the person who decides that everybody else is doing everything wrong isn’t the person who is correct. It is the person who is the most belligerent and controlling. And so, any “advice” that you get given via annoyed comments on teamspeak or randoms on map chat isn’t necessarily correct, and will often be dismissed. Largely because the other guy has the wit to defend his own assertions.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The whole point being that, with builds requiring custom tailoring and specific sigils/runes depending on team composition, Ascended is even more of a requirement, as it gives that necessary leeway to allow for more diversity and more mistakes in practice. This is enforced, because “skill” is not going to suddenly fill the gaps in the minds of players who are playing this content. Ascended gear will.

Nope, as I stated with the mesmer. It’s a way bigger difference having a skilled chronomancer and a team in exotics than not having a chrono but all peeps are in ascended.

And as I stated before, nope, it is a significant difference between having ascended gear and having exotic. Likewise, what you are talking about isn’t necessarily skill, but builds. And a build isn’t skillful, it is something you can copy/paste 5 minutes after discovering the game.

Vinceman.4572:

The argument of ascended gives a bigger leeway is not debatable, yes. But I still haven’t denied it.

But you have denied it. You have said time and again that ascended will not provide a meaningful advantage, and that it is all skill.

Cyninja.2954:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I have provided quotations, links, mathematics, and logic, and I have explained multiple times in detail how your assertions are faulty. You are being a hypocrite here: You made this thread so people can make their own conclusions, then spew a superiority complex when someone makes a conclusion you don’t agree with.

None of these were made in this thread or in any thread you linked in this threads discussion.

They were made all over this thread. Pay attention now. Your entire arguing point is to pretend this thread didn’t happen.

Cyninja.2954:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Just because something is doable in exotics doesn’t mean that Anet isn’t trying to get people to gear up. You can do high level fractals in the nude, too, but that doesn’t stop Agony Resistance from being an unyielding pressure to get you into ascended. I’m also not going to pretend that the consistent debate on the nature of raids and casuals that has permeated this game suddenly doesn’t exist.

Great, so take your bs into those other threads and stop derailing this one. Or did I just misunderstand you basically stating that “since everyone is talking about raids being for casuals, I’m going to blame every topic about raids for doing this?”.
Show me where this was at any point part of this debate.

Also your point on fractals being doable naked if off. That used to be the case but certainly is not with guaranteed agony damage ever since the fractured patch.

Um, no, that’s now how it works. When there is an ever-present topic about something, especially something controversial like raids, then every thread made about that topic is just a more specific line in the entire grand discussion. So yes, everything I’ve said is pertinent to this thread, especially when it has been in response to the small paragraph that I originally posted.

Likewise, your complaint here is that I am right about fractals, but not in the particular exact way that you would like. It is called nitpicking.

Cyninja.2954:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You’ve made up an intermediary step that wasn’t there. The real line is this: Recommended = Balanced Around. And it holds. Riddle me this: if the raids weren’t balanced around ascended gear, then why would the devs recommend it in the first place? Wouldn’t they say “don’t worry, you can stick to exotic gear?”.
Your end point is also nonsensical. You’re basically just saying that I will be right in the future, and therefore I’ve made a mistake somehow. I fail to see how that follows. And also, this contradicts your first point, because you are saying that yes, ascended will be required for raids, in spite of everything you’ve done to assert the contrary.

Yes, and we might see a level cap increase in the future, or the introduction of a new tier of gear, or the moon might fall onto the earth and end all life as we know it. Doesn’t matter we should worry about any of that now because, you know, it might not happen too.

Plans change, and even if arenanet sticks to their original plan, it’s not in game yet.
Also on why arenanet would encourage ascended: I don’t know, maybe to have people slowly gear up and prevent this current made up issue before it becomes an actual issue.

To simply assume this to be due to balance is assuming much.

The devs haven’t recommended buying higher level gear, so I wouldn’t worry about a level cap. Regardless, you’re using the uncertainty of the future to distract from the point that what you wrote is paradoxical.

You’re saying you don’t know why it is Anet recommends ascended. Maybe it is because, as the hardest content that has ever been released in the game, that ascended provides bonuses that are significant enough give success where there would’ve been failure? That maybe, as the content was designed to be “hardcore endgame content”, that the assumption would be that this end-game content would require end-game materials to beat it? Maybe it is because the gear of tier would be pertinent to the success of the raid in some way, shape, or form? Frankly, the idea of assuming it would have to deal with balance isn’t “much”. It is common sense.

Cyninja.2954:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Yeah, sorry, having an opinion doesn’t make you superior. You are not the next best thing to a word of god. I have demonstrated, time and again, that what you are saying doesn’t make sense, and have provided countless counter-arguments. You are just so full of it that anything you don’t agree with or don’t believe doesn’t count in your own mind.

I do wonder exactly how your brain functions. You first consider yourself absolute authority, then say you are open to opinion and let people say whatever they want, then have a problem with people saying whatever they want because they don’t agree with your beliefs, and that nothing anyone says that disagrees with you can mean anything. There’s a term for this: doublethink

I consider myself above nothing no matter how many times you state this. Do the following, reread this thread or better yet, have someone who’s opinion you value read the thread and ask them: what do you think?

You strolling in here and smokbombing a thread with predjudices and preconceptions from other threads certainly is not a simple opinion. Also no matter how many faulty examples you give, none of them stick unless they make sense.

I see you, too, do not have access to the scroll wheel. I came into this thread and said two sentences along with a quote from the video. The only reason why this discussion exists is because people were not content with the fact that I said the video was of no comfort to the whole “ascended required” debate that rages on everywhere. Every. Single. Thing. I have said in this thread has been a response to people being utterly intolerant to me.

You hypocrites have provoked the beast yourselves. Your words are betrayed by your actions.

Cyninja.2954:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

When I say things, I’m not even sure you understand them.

Wait, what was that about feeling superior and above others? O yeah right, it was me supposedly.

Actually, I’m fairly certain that Vinceman isn’t a native English speaker. The words are misspelled and written oddly, and it seems like every point I make goes over his head. I’ve typed out “the point is” so many times that I am considering making it a macro.

Cyninja.2954:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Likewise, you are being a hypocrite again. You accuse me of being deceptive, while deliberately omitting everything I have said about trinkets. I have to repeat that, out of trinkets, only rings were cheap. Everything else is not. Likewise, I calculated the ascended back item using the Quiver of Swift Flight, which costs 159.2 gold to make. Going by that cost, I underestimated it. Your original statement is omitting something very important: the most statistically significant difference in terms of performance in ascended gear is weapons. Not only because of the additional stats they provide, but because their modifier on weapon strength applies to everything, magnifying the bonuses of every other ascended item. I am not "deceptive’, I am more inclusive.

Also, the trinkets via alternative methods use specific stat sets. It only matters if you can use alternative means to acquire a useful trinket, not a useless one.

So you pick a more expensive backpiece to prove a point? Great, there goes your credibility. I thought we were talking about cheapest possible way.

Actually, I didn’t know that the other quiver existed. I picked the quiver of swift flight because it was listed under the “berserker” section on the wiki.

Cyninja.2954:

Mentioning alternative stat combinations for trinkets too is not in favor of your “trinkets are not cheap” credo since most new stat combinations are based on achievements (if available at all). Again, not a major goldsink. Let’s keep throwing those smokebombs and confusing people.
If your “inclusion” of ascended weapons had been simply inclusive, you would have made a clear distinction of this instead of lumping it with the value of trinkets.

So you can buy berserker trinkets with achievements now? Regardless, I am lumping together weapons and trinkets because they are part of the package. In fact, weapons are far more significant than the trinkets are. So you are saying “at least coughpartchough of the ascended gear is cheap! heyyyyyy, don’t bring up the bigger, more important part. you’re lying! weapons don’t count!” when you moan about how I brought up weapons when dealing with the cost of ascended. You’re trying to catch me on a technicality, but to do so means that you are lying in the first place.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You can get particular stat sets of ascended trinkets that way. Personally, I’ve found the ascended nomad trinkets from LWS2 to only be good for salvaging.

This is cherrypicking at it’s best. We have already shown you some alternatives. The Wiki and Google will also help players to acquire their trinkets. Communication and guilds are also a good point.

You have shown nothing. At all.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

And change the runes and sigils every time I swap them, as the build that they are tailor made for may not necessarily be the same between classes, or even the same between any particular group. DnT guides themselves usually recommending having multiple copies of the same weapon with different sigils for this exact purpose: if you have to replace your rune set every time you alt, the prices get out of hand very quickly.

I have said “some” not all. An example: I can use the same sword and axe of my warrior on my revenant. Same with mace between guard and warrior.
And if DnT is telling me that I need different weapon sigils or armor runes on VG, Gorse and Sabe, only to be able to beat these three, I would laugh at them very hard. (I know they won’t do it)

You still have to make multiple ascended items, and passing between toons is not a productive solution.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I suppose that, instead of giving my characters their own ascended weapons, I can just make 3-4 copies of every weapon and then have each one of them with different sigils, and allocate them to different classes. But that isn’t cheaper than just making ascended weapons for all my toons in the first place.

Just use your brain and some mathematics and you will find out that you don’t need to invest that much gold. What a bullkitten!

You’re not a native English speaker, are you? Anyway, yeah it isn’t cheaper. I’d have to make multiples of weapons, with different stat sets and different sigils. I’m already ending up having 4-5 copies of some weapons, which is basically just making the weapons for the toons themselves anyhow.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You just contradicted yourself. “bad rng” IS LUCK.

Look, this is why we cannot take your whole arguments and the discussion seriously any longer. You are whining like a little child. I dissociate myself now from this hairsplitting and just state the fact that the seekers and green circles aren’t against you all the time. You can also see to it that seekers are pushed away and you can take influence on the spawning field of the green circle. Maybe you will get a bad rng once or twice, as long as you execute your thing properly you will succeed. Rng won’t stop you from the goal line if you are attempting more than 1-3 times.

If they aren’t against you all the time, then that means they are against you some of the time. Ergo, bad luck. It isn’t hairsplitting, it is a contradiction: what you have said is the rhetorical equivalent to a cat walking across the keyboard: utter nonsense. You are flailing like an impotent parent when their kids won’t listen to what they say, never questioning whether you make sense in the first place.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

So basically you have no evidence and no bit of logic to assert the contrary, but just rest assured that you’re right somehow. Yeah, no. I don’t buy it for a second. I’ve joined guild run dungeons before. Several dozen times over the years. It is actually easier to maintain damage in them, as enemies are more likely to be disabled and pulled to a single location, and dangerous targets get focused so it is easier to stay alive.

What? The only thing I am saying is, that better players are executing stuff better than worse players. You don’t believe that? It is no miracle that if you are in a group with a thief blinding the trash you can drive max dps without caring. But there is this player required who knows how to. That’s the same thing in raids. Every single out of 10 players need to know his class or at least 9 people since we are actually able to carry one bad apple in the raid. But if there are 2 or more people that have no clue about what they are doing, you won’t succeed in raids. And now I want to know where is the transition to exotics and asc here? A player that dumb will have no impact and won’t succeed at all, not with exotics, not with asc.

Lol no. What you are saying is that I personally suck and if I had good teammates I would have to be carried. You have no proof that my the assertion in performance between the median player and a player of phantom skill level isn’t close together, so you just devolved into vague condescending statement about how I would somehow see that I was wrong if I just played with good people.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You’ve made this mistake about a dozen times now, so I’m going to stop you here. VG is not the raid.

What is the most complaint then? About what are we arguing? The people that saying VG is not doable with exotics and this is bs. Proven as hardcore bs. And I didn’t make any mistake. They beat all encounters in exotics. I am right here, the arguments are on my side.

Well, the complaints about the raid are, generally, about the raid in its entirety. You’ve spent the whole time only talking about the Vale Guardian, which is the only part where the vid maker said the time was lenient, and instead completely ignore the other two thirds of the raid, where the vid maker said that the time was strict, incredibly difficult, and required peak performance of the whole team. So, when the guy says something along the lines of “ignore what this video shows, and do it in ascended”, this is what he is talking about.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

At what point exactly did I say that a raid should be easy? How far did you get into the paragraph before you closed your mind and opened our mouth? This paragraph doesn’t have to do with anything, and it is utter BS. If you want to say that the difference between exotic and ascended doesn’t play a part, then prove the math wrong somehow. This whole “i’m too cool for statistically significant differences to matter” thing is a big steaming pile of cow kitten .

And again, you are trying to put something in my mouth I have never ever said.
One last time:

Is there is a difference of ascended gear compared to exotics? Yes!

Does it matter in being successful in the raid. Not at all KING has proven it.

KING has not proven that ascended doesn’t matter. KING has proven that if you are good enough, the raid can barely be done in exotics. KING has also said that you shouldn’t do it in Exotics until after you have the experience of doing it in Ascended. In order for this to be true, Ascended must have a meaningful impact in the raid.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You’re trying to turn this to be about my skill. Stop distracting from the point. Also, there is quite a large amount of the playerbase that can’t beat the encounters. Therefore, just admit that the devs were right and this is “hardcore content”.

I can beat the content, so my friends and all the dudes I have played with for longer than 1 day can say that I am the living proof this raid wing is not hardcore content.

It just means you’re hardcore.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’ve seen plenty on the forums and in the game. Raids are a highly toxic environment, so much so that people are making videos just to debate that subject, which is why this very thread was started. Or have you forgotten that already?

Maybe these people should focus on training and not making stupid videos where they argue dozens of hours like politicians. DO IT and THEN talk about it.

This is irrelevant.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Raids aren’t dungeons. What applies to dungeons doesn’t apply to raids. The big difference here is that, when dungeons were made, they were designed with relative ignorance of the combat systems for the game. When raids were designed, they were designed with an extremely well informed experience over the combat systems of the game.

“Well informed experience over the combat systems”? Rly? According to you, highest toughness for being the tank, Boon strip, condition damage, applying cc (although we had icebow to stop dmg from mobs for over a year) and some pew-pew-gliding is well informed experience over the combat system? I can barely laugh about that.

Never have I said any of those. You’re also being difficult here on purpose. You know what I mean, and are refusing to cooperate.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Likewise, dungeons were nerfed purposefully and powercreeped. Fractals were also powercreeped, and then most recently nerfed again. The state that we see dungeons in now is nothing like how they were during beta, or launch. I still remember people making guides on how to get past the burrows in the lover’s crypt for Ascalon Catacombs. Funny thing, doing that dungeon at launch in level 35 masterwork gear was actually difficult.

And? Like you are implying: Dungeons are 3 years old, fractals 2 years. Let’s wait a bit with raids. Maybe they won’t even survive this lifespan. But I am sure they will be easy for everyone if they still exist in 2017. Ppl making guides for raids now and they will continue till it won’t give any more value.

And dungeons =/= raids. It is simply that. What you’re saying here is irrelevant.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Emphasis mine. Your personal clique is not representative of what people think about raids. And it doesn’t matter what what your clique thinks about the asc. vs. exotic debate. The benefits are ascended are a fact. You can measure them and everything.

And? I never denied that. We all know that and we all wrote that down here many times.
Beyond that I know my limits but I also know the limit of players that are only doing content like world bosses or SW. You need to press “1” for this content and another key to loot. This is not how raids are working. Hard to accept that for that kind of players. But it is like it is.

If you are willing to accept that ascended has a meaningful impact, then the discussion is over.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You have no point here. “Well” is still an opinion. You are just being irritating.

And where is your point? So you think it is not well designed. Why? The enrage timers just ensures that you cannot facetank the content. Maybe it’s my opinion and I think with this result it is a good designed (= correct timespan) timer.

Since you are responding to my response to someone else, I’ll have to explain it. Cyninja threw out the typical highly opinionated value judgements that mean nothing and proclaimed them as “fact” that proved his case. He had no case. Your entire line is “ya huh!” + another debatable tidbit. You have nothing here.

My point is that the raid is well designed… for ascended. My evidence of this is that the devs recommend ascended, and that successes on bosses are often well within the threshold of the exotic-ascended differences.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

If you frequent the thief forum, you’d notice that a chief complaint is that the daredevil is never taken into raids, that you can’t get into raids as a daredevil, and that the daredevil is the least used class in successful runs. Likewise, something that doesn’t get displayed is that these different team comps are all built around each other. They’re frequent groups of friends with enough spare gold to tailor-make their gear specifically to work well with other tailor-made gear. If you just build solo or PVP-style your team will have a lot of redundancy that has to be worked around, and these build choices can have a substantial impact. I.E. using scholar runes instead of strength in max might situations, using sigil of night/accuracy instead of strength in max might situations, building for direct bonuses instead of self-buffing, etc. and so on. Sigil of Night is 10% by itself, so the product of building for the group can have quite the substantial difference in performance.

Sigil of Night is deactivated in raids. It was printed several weeks before release so everybody can adapt. Strength vs. Scholar has no relevant impact on pugs. If you are min/maxing, yes there is a difference but that has nothing to do with exotics vs. asc.

It was a particular example taken from dungeons. Likewise, min/maxing has everything to do with exotics vs. ascended. Ascended is maxed. Exotics are not. And as you are intruding upon a different conversation, so I will recap what is happening… again. The whole point is that what Cyninja attributed as proof of skill differences isn’t proof of skill differences. And that point holds. I gave a rough example in another thread once to demonstrate that, even with conservative numbers, that build can have a large effect on overall performance. The number I ended up with is roughly 50%, if you aren’t built specifically for raid circumstances.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Have you seen the Gorseval kill? They failed the first time then had 9 seconds remaining the second time. Quit cherry picking.

Ofc they failed. EVERY FRICKING raid group was and is failing. Even with asc items. This is like “Mordor”: You just don’t walk simply into raids and beat them. Look at some of older speed run attempt video takeouts of the speedclear guilds. They are messing up on three year old faceroll content from time to time.

You’re distracting from the point: you are cherry picking examples where the time remaining was long, and ignoring the parts where the time remaining was short. Short time intervals argue for ascended.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Yes, they did. “- the raid is doable and balanced around being completed in full exotic – FACT” — Cyninja. Earlier in the thread.

Yes, that is their statement but like Cyninja already pointed out: “recommended” ist not equal “balanced around” to “100% required”.

So then you are admitting that someone said that if something is doable in exotic gear, then it is meant to be doable in exotic gear. Good to know. Regardless, I’ve already responded to this earlier.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Um.. yes, it does mean that it is only for ascended. That’s the whole point of designing things for ascended. If the system happens to be designed poorly or not tuned properly, that doesn’t change intent.

What? Ok, so it is for ascended and I am not allowed to play in exotics now or how should I understand that?
What is your point here? What are you trying to say?
And again, Cyninja mentioned it: The last boss of the raid is not even released and that was their statement. “Maybe you will be able to kill some bosses in exotics if you are organized, but the last boss is meant to be fought in ascended gear only.”

I’ve already responded to cyninja. Now if you are accepting that I am correct (although your constant “What?” makes me think you don’t understand me at all), then I want you to admit that raids are not casual friendly. They are hardcore content, made to be exclusive, and a dedicated guild running group beating the guild in exotic doesn’t somehow make the gear tier irrelevant.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

It is crazy. The difference between ascended and exotic is quickly calculated, and easily noticeable. Buying an extra 50 seconds in a fight is a big deal.

Yes, there is a difference, ofc you are faster. Nobody was denying that. But the 1.5 minutes of Deroir are a simple sign that it is more than possible for a pug to be successful in just exotics.

Cherry Picking.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You just contradicted yourself. You said people play poorly and lose because they mouse click their skills. Then you assert that mouseclicking skills doesn’t cause you to lose. So which is it?

Nope, I didn’t. At first, I just showed you that a gaming mouse doesn’t make the difference between defeating or losing. Secondly, if you can klick fast, you are also in time and fine but another buddy of mine is clicking everything. He cannot beat the VG because he is just too slow to get the actions done. This is why he admitted that this content is not his thing and it won’t be in the future.

Yes, you did.

" They are dying way earlier due to several mistakes like … being too slow with cc (a.k.a. mouse klicking spells)"

Then

“… and I am also clicking some abilities with the mouse. The thing is: I’ve beaten the encounters. Your argument is invalid!”

And now you are saying that it only counts when you say it counts. Mouse clicking doesn’t lead to failure, except in the cases where it does lead to failure. Sounds to me like the problem isn’t actually mouse clicking at all.

And after all that, it has nothing to deal with an enrage timer encouraging risky behavior.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is another thing that is contradictory. You assert that people are losing because they aren’t playing well enough, but then say don’t worry about it and play it safe. When a player plays it safe, they attack with ranged weapons to avoid all of the mechanics, and end up doing terrible DPS because of it. So, they have to play risky in order to do enough deeps to win.

Well, you have everything achieved asap in life you had to do? I doubt that. You had to practice, practice and practice. The higher you get the barriers become bigger and bigger and you have to take step by step to get across them.
Put that to the raid. You start and you will try to do as less mistakes as possible. If you can do that properly with your whole group, which is hard, you will perhaps die to the enrage timer. Maybe, but I am certain you will not. Or maybe you will 2-3 times. Then your next goal will be what? Yes, looking for an increase of dps.
You will come to conclusions: Are we having the right classes? How are the builds, is there anything we can adjust? And so on.
In the end, the thing is: It’s not the exotic gear that will make you struggle.

“Practice” doesn’t change the issue. You still have to play risky to maximize DPS. Having exotic gear will kitten your performance.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Are you saying that practicing failing tactics will somehow get you to succeed? Regardless, the first wipes you’ll get on a raid will always be because of learning the mechanics. That is a given, and isn’t actually relevant to the whole “Enrage Timer encourages riskier behavior” issue.

Try and error will lead you to success if you are able to learn. That is what I pointed out.
And sure learning the mechanics is a given, I didn’t even deny that. But again: pugs are wiping most frequently due to mechanical mistakes, not the enrage timer!

They are making mechanical mistakes because the enrage timer forces them to play riskier. We’ve officially come full circle now.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m not sure 8 nomad-hammer-guards would ever make it past gorseval or sabetha, timer or not. Either way, I’m not sure it is a problem. Having an entire tank group like that would mean that the players would have to contend with the OHKO mechanics of the raid for 45 mintues straight, per boss. You yourself are saying that most players die because of the raid mechanics themselves. Wearing tankier gear won’t solve that problem.

Why aren’t you sure? I haven’t seen a try till now. And wearing tankier gear is solving the problem of incoming damage. At VG I can run around circles with my full soldier guard (not even nomads!) and I only die when there aren’t enough people for the green circles. 8 (2 groups of 4+4) nomad hammer guards won’t die there if we have no timer. Ah, i have to admit, they can die there – if they are stupid/have no skill at all.

If you are constantly dying to mechanical problems and raid mechanics (many of which are OHKOs), then prolonging how much you are exposed to these problems prolongs how likely it is you will die. I.E. the likelyhood that 4 players will miss the circle grows exponentially the longer the fight becomes.

Vale Guardian is the worst example here. Let me elaborate on the better example: as you fight Sabetha, the platform you are on will take damage. Slowly, but it will accumulate. If you decide that DPS means nothing and go full tank, you won’t be able to kill the minions that cause damage to the platform, and thus it will cause you to fail.

I’ve played other games with raids, and the failure mechanic isn’t always a hard timer. Back in City of Heroes, there was practically a different failure mechanic for each boss in their raids. Sometimes adds could accumulate too quickly, sometimes boss regen would grow too high and you couldn’t out-damage it anymore… one of my favorites was a boss that would create damage patches that did high piercing damage (that is, damage that ignored toughness), and as the fight went on, more and more of these patches of start appearing. If that mechanic was adapted to a raid, after awhile the patches would consume the world and you’d all die.

I’m fine with there being a soft timer like that, because it gives you multiple means of managing the difficulties of the boss. But a hard enrage timer is the worst way to do things. It removes flexibility instead of encouraging it.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

There’s many ways to build a boss to not be doable in full tank gear. Sabetha’s platform, for example. Enrage timers are a copy/paste from other MMOs, and are based on counteracting the extremely simplistic design of their content.

And? I don’t know what you are trying to say with that. Are you blaming the devs for installing a timer? A timer that plays no role if you are familiar with the mechanics?
You were taught that the timer is no argument against exotics and for ascended, that is the key in this discussion, not the timer itself.

The timer does play a role. It forces particular builds and strategies to maximize DPS, because otherwise the timer will force a failure. Ascended gear directly affects DPS, and since DPS is pertinent to the timer, ergo the timer is an argument against exotics.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The whole point is that it isn’t O.K. to stop moving to press a key. But, the problem with having all of your keybinds allocated to the left hand is that, in the fight, you’ll be using 2-3 fingers to move and dodge, which makes activating some skills difficult.

I don’t get your point here. Just play like you can do best with your mouse, keyboard, wheel or whatsoever. I have a gaming mouse with no bindings, a gaming keyboard with no bindings, I am older than the average, I have to work from monday to friday and even on weekend to prepare lessons for school or to phone with colleagues/parents. I am still able to beat the content. Your statement is, that it’s due to ascended and magic. I’d say it’s due to practice, improvement, fun and a big portion of ambition!

My point here is that you completely misunderstood what I said. You still aren’t understanding what I am saying. I’ve said countless times that there is no “magic”.

Look, I’m not going to lie: this discussion isn’t productive. Right now, all you are doing is taking each individual quote, then posting whatever retort that comes to mind regardless if it is relevant (or even rational). When I say things, I’m not even sure you understand them.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

“Regardless of what I am about to show you”. Anything in that video you submit as evidence is immediately contradicted by what the video itself says. If the guy making the video literally says not to use Exotic Gear, then what is the arguing point for exotic gear being adequate? How badly you can ignore what the author himself says?

What? So much lol!

Ofc he is recommending to do the content in asc gear because it is easier and he is not recommending to do it in exotics because it is harder. That changes nothing on the fact that the content can be cleared in exotics. And there is also another point why he is telling this: He is a better player than many others will ever be. And he knows that, otherwise he would just say: I recommend doing the raid in exotics but maybe it’s possible with rare gear.

So if he is a better player than many others will ever be, that implies that many others wouldn’t be able to clear the content in exotics. Dude, logic isn’t just some verbal trickery invented by old guys. It is actually a useful tool to for the betterment of society.

Maybe you’ve missed it, but “can” does not mean practical, worthwhile, accessible, or reliable. It means that leet players can beat content with a handicap. See: nude runs. Hell, even fractals only require ascended for agony resistance. “Can” is the most worthless of qualifiers, and is of no comfort to the casual crowd.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You are purposefully ignoring everything I’ve demonstrated mathematically just to be contradictory. My numbers won’t go away because you can ignore the author of the video.

And his numbers are going away or what? He stated that they have 1.5 minutes left on their timer during their proper VG-kill. 90 seconds left in full exotics. These seconds are 18.75% of the full timer! You cannot ignore that.

Cherry picking again.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The funny thing about DPS rotations and build compositions is that, every time they are improved, it immediately proves the previous set as inferior. Thus, anything you say about a meta comp is more likely than not, wrong as a necessity. Due to the complexity of how you can arrange the builds of a 10 man group, there isn’t a “set way” that anything can be done. Let alone, any sort of guiding hand that would leave people there.

I have never ever said anything against that. The fact that you can have different team compositions AND still defeat the bosses is an argument for exotic gear not against. It shows that teamplay and playerskill is responsible for a success but not the gear.

Yes, you did. You said that for raids, there is a right way to do things, and a wrong way to do things. You also said that the only reason why people can ram their head against the raid wall and not progress is that they aren’t doing it right. Now you’re going off on some random tangent about how the thing you disagreed with somehow argues for exotic gear (which it doesn’t. Ascended gear would mean more leeway and more build diversity, so yay ascended!), and are forgetting that for many raids are an insurmountable wall that leaves them perplexed and with no idea how to improve or get better. The whole “10 hours not succeeding” thing is disproof of skill being a sole deciding factor, as after that much practice and experience a person would have all the skill they needed.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Again, you’ve cut out an extremely important part of my post: there is no “guiding hand” or indicator of what a player is doing wrong. Sure, if they don’t meet the DPS requirements they can change their gear to do more damage (assuming that they can still survive), but even when that happens and you still lose, what then? I’ll give an example: Phantasmal Swordsman is the highest damaging Illusion for Mesmers. However, unless you sit there with a stop watch and time the hits and how much damage they do, you wouldn’t have access to that information. So if a raid comes down to something like which phantasm you use (or any other class equivalent), what indication is there that phantasmal duelist is the wrong one?

That is what I meant with “You can’t play how you want”. At least you have to read your traits, skills and the best choice is to discuss with your other 9 players to find gaps or doublings that can be deleted for an increase of dps or sustain. Still has nothing to do with exotics.

You’ve completely missed the point: there is no guiding hand that will suddenly give you this knowledge. This will leave you on a localized maximum performance hill that is insubstantial to complete the content. Ascended gear increases the height of this hill, allowing you to complete content that you couldn’t complete previously.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This applies for more than just damage. If players die, is the healer not healing well enough? What is the maximum healing? Is boon application not enough? What constitutes the threshold for useful boon application in a 10 man group? How would a player acquire this information in-game? I’ve seen plenty of guides myself, many of them suggesting different things for the same game mode. How do you tell which one is true when they all seem to fail equally?

This is why you test it. You talk to other players that are playing your class. You read guides and you gain more and more informations. The game is played by thousands of players so you are not the single man on Mars. Be communicative and you will get help if you stuck.
And you try, try, try. Sometimes little changes will bring you closer to the goal line and then you will keep them.
Still has nothing to do with exotics.

And your teammates, who are equally failing, are supposed to know this how? If you test multiple things and still fail, how are you sure that you’ve even done better? It also has a lot to deal with exotics. See local maximum above.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Your perspective is skewed. The people who sit down with a stop watch and time things to get maximum DPS rotations are the vast minority. 99% of gamers are not like us. But, because you are surrounded by people who do the same, you can’t fathom that a person wouldn’t know this information, and would lack the ability to even conceptualize DPS.

You don’t even need to. It is an example. But before I say “I use this and that weapon on a char for raids cuz it’s cool.” I will keep an eye if it makes sense. Like before, there are enough youtube videos that will explain to me why I shouldn’t playing rifle warrior.

So… you spend the previous two quotes talking about how you should inch incrementally toward getting higher DPS (in spite of having no capability of testing that), then say you don’t need to do the things that would allow you to inch forward.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Now this is hilarious. Your damage numbers aren’t your DPS. That’s just how big a number you can get. Your DPS is your damage divided by time, which is a unit that isn’t provided in this game. I’ve taught enough people physics to know that “rate” is a concept not everyone understands easily. Hell, you yourself just got it wrong.

I don’t know what to say, sigh. Ofc you need a timer for getting dps results. So you record your rotations on video and you can timeshift properly with a software of your choice.
I don’t know why you are hanging on this, lol. NoTrigger already told you that you don’t even need the best dps rotations, you will still succeed.

So you are supposed to incrementally step forward, but not use the tools to do that, but then you don’t need to? Anyway, the point is that, since you yourself failed to conceptualize DPS in a debate related to DPS, that other people will also fail to conceptualize DPS properly, and thus will not improve in a meaningful way, as that information is not obvious. Thus, the advantages that Ascended gives become more and more necessary the less leet you are.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

That doesn’t change the erroneous nature of your statement. You are defending the assertion that the only reason why it is people fail is because they aren’t doing it right, that gear tiers aren’t important. What do you think happens if, after a full work day of grinding on a raid boss? That the player never realizes that you need to stand in the green circle? That the red guardian needs conditions to be killed? In order to assert that gear tiers aren’t important, you have to assert a measure of incompetence onto people so severe that they would lack the basic skills to… be.

Oh yes, there are many incompetent players out there. I wasted 2 hours on VG due to my buddy not knowing how to use alacrity on mesmer because he played a selfish build. That was what I meant with you have to communicate with your team. He also didn’t use sword for boon strip although we told him and relied on it!
The next example was a tank that always pulled the VG near the green circle so that some of the other dumb players in our group were teleported away. I told it several times in TS and after 30 minutes of not adapting, I just quit.
One or two groups later, people listened, did their job, some in exotics, some in ascended and we had over 50 seconds left because it was well executed.

To be fair, the benefits of alacrity on teammates are even less obvious than outright DPS calculations. I’ve been on teams in dungeons countless times where the self-appointed elitist of the group would complain about the wrong things. Heck, every time I try to organize King of the Jungle I have to deal with at least one know-it-all who will fight tooth and nail against the accepted and time tested methods that work. After all, it isn’t like the correct choice is obvious or something that you can come across after several hours of practice.

The whole point being that, with builds requiring custom tailoring and specific sigils/runes depending on team composition, Ascended is even more of a requirement, as it gives that necessary leeway to allow for more diversity and more mistakes in practice. This is enforced, because “skill” is not going to suddenly fill the gaps in the minds of players who are playing this content. Ascended gear will.

Cyninja.2954:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Cyninja.2954:

It always amazes me how people try to spin and argue things into their favor no matter what is shown

You are utterly full of it. Your beliefs on this subject are not automatically correct and superior just because you hold them. What proof do you have that you aren’t the deluded one, spinning things into his own favor no matter what they are shown? And here you stand, talking down to people who disagree with you. It is insulting, and you should feel bad.

The biggest problem I have here is that I have not been given one piece of information that isn’t internally contradictory or utter nonsense. It is like this in every single thread I’ve heard. Why can’t you people just admit that, as the devs intended, raids are not casual in any sense? No, you always have to go on with hate speech about anyone who can’t do the raids because they’re stupid or something.

I’m not full of anything. I provided a link, everyone can watch the video and read the thread and make their own conclusions. You have provided 0 material on this subject except for your subjective view.

I have provided quotations, links, mathematics, and logic, and I have explained multiple times in detail how your assertions are faulty. You are being a hypocrite here: You made this thread so people can make their own conclusions, then spew a superiority complex when someone makes a conclusion you don’t agree with.

Cyninja.2954:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

. Why can’t you people just admit that, as the devs intended, raids are not casual in any sense? No, you always have to go on with hate speech about anyone who can’t do the raids because they’re stupid or something.

No one said raids are casual friendly. Wth are you talking about? This entire thread is about players and for players who are interested in raiding. The fact that raid content is not casual friendly AND difficult is a GIVEN.

The only question was and always has been, is it doable in exotics or are arenanet forcing people to gear up.

Oh and on the hate speach part, I’m not going to comment your aggressive post. People reading this thread get to make their own judgments.

Just because something is doable in exotics doesn’t mean that Anet isn’t trying to get people to gear up. You can do high level fractals in the nude, too, but that doesn’t stop Agony Resistance from being an unyielding pressure to get you into ascended. I’m also not going to pretend that the consistent debate on the nature of raids and casuals that has permeated this game suddenly doesn’t exist.

Cyninja.2954:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is not true at all. The devs recommended having full ascended for the raids, ergo the raids were balanced around full ascended.

Recommended =/= required =/= balanced around.

Also we are not at the endboss of the raid which essentially is where ascended will supposedly be required. Stop making stuff up.

You’ve made up an intermediary step that wasn’t there. The real line is this: Recommended = Balanced Around. And it holds. Riddle me this: if the raids weren’t balanced around ascended gear, then why would the devs recommend it in the first place? Wouldn’t they say “don’t worry, you can stick to exotic gear?”.

Your end point is also nonsensical. You’re basically just saying that I will be right in the future, and therefore I’ve made a mistake somehow. I fail to see how that follows. And also, this contradicts your first point, because you are saying that yes, ascended will be required for raids, in spite of everything you’ve done to assert the contrary.

Cyninja.2954:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is nonsense. “Well designed” is a quality judgement. It can’t be a fact, because “well” is strictly an opinion. As is “very”. If I say they are not well designed, how do you prove me wrong, or prove yourself right?

Correct, and my quality judgement is based on the given material to be viewed. The only way to prove this to be or not be the case would require a look at the exact numbers used in the code. Since we have no access to those and I don’t expect arenanet to give us access, I’m using the next best thing. You have not provided anything resembling a counter argument even to this subjective opinion in form of player data.

Yeah, sorry, having an opinion doesn’t make you superior. You are not the next best thing to a word of god. I have demonstrated, time and again, that what you are saying doesn’t make sense, and have provided countless counter-arguments. You are just so full of it that anything you don’t agree with or don’t believe doesn’t count in your own mind.

I do wonder exactly how your brain functions. You first consider yourself absolute authority, then say you are open to opinion and let people say whatever they want, then have a problem with people saying whatever they want because they don’t agree with your beliefs, and that nothing anyone says that disagrees with you can mean anything. There’s a term for this: doublethink

Cyninja.2954:

I’d get into all the nitpicking seperately, but to be honest I simply don’t care what you think. You mix my statements with other facts in order to delude and twist their meaning (see my comment on trinkets. I never mentioned weapons to be cheap, yet you use them as a counter argument).

Trinkets are easy to come by IF you use the appropriate content (yes, they are more expensive if you revert to backup content. this has been pointed out multiple times).

Also last time I checked, even the backpack number you gave is way off (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quiver_of_a_Thousand_Arrows) at current market price comes out at about 90g (way less than 150g, and evene cheaper with buy orders. that’s not even considering the cheapest alternative which is via the intended way of crafting a fractal backpiece). Hyberbole much?

If you didn’t care what I thought, then you wouldn’t have spent several posts dedicated to talking about it.

Likewise, you are being a hypocrite again. You accuse me of being deceptive, while deliberately omitting everything I have said about trinkets. I have to repeat that, out of trinkets, only rings were cheap. Everything else is not. Likewise, I calculated the ascended back item using the Quiver of Swift Flight, which costs 159.2 gold to make. Going by that cost, I underestimated it. Your original statement is omitting something very important: the most statistically significant difference in terms of performance in ascended gear is weapons. Not only because of the additional stats they provide, but because their modifier on weapon strength applies to everything, magnifying the bonuses of every other ascended item. I am not "deceptive’, I am more inclusive.

Also, the trinkets via alternative methods use specific stat sets. It only matters if you can use alternative means to acquire a useful trinket, not a useless one.

Cyninja.2954:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

There isn’t some magic force that will guide you to an optimized DPS rotation and a perfect build for the encounter. You can’t even measure your DPS.

You can measure your DPS. PvP-Golem anyone + Dmg-numbers in the chat panel?

Now this is hilarious. Your damage numbers aren’t your DPS. That’s just how big a number you can get. Your DPS is your damage divided by time, which is a unit that isn’t provided in this game. I’ve taught enough people physics to know that “rate” is a concept not everyone understands easily. Hell, you yourself just got it wrong.

Maybe use a damage meter? Might help…. oh and those available use the chat panel currently. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Yeah, they’ve been tested out before and are frequently incorrect. Sometimes they’re even illegal. Even then, they’re not necessarily applicable.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Why can’t you people just admit that, as the devs intended, raids are not casual in any sense?

It’s because a not very small playerbase has shown that they can beat the encounters.
If you are not able to do so, you are not a very skilled player. Sorry to say that. It’s no insult to be bad, you are just not bringing the level of succeeding in this part of the game. Nothing to blame about. Not everyone is a good cook, mathematician or athlete.

You’re trying to turn this to be about my skill. Stop distracting from the point. Also, there is quite a large amount of the playerbase that can’t beat the encounters. Therefore, just admit that the devs were right and this is “hardcore content”.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

No, you always have to go on with hate speech about anyone who can’t do the raids because they’re stupid or something.

I don’t see any hate speech here. Just complaints from your side and many many helpful comments in this forum from successful peeps how to beat or fight against VG, Gorseval and Sabetha.

I’ve seen plenty on the forums and in the game. Raids are a highly toxic environment, so much so that people are making videos just to debate that subject, which is why this very thread was started. Or have you forgotten that already?

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is not true at all. The devs recommended having full ascended for the raids, ergo the raids were balanced around full ascended.

The devs also described dungeons as a place where only the best souls of Tyria will persist. After some time passed by CoF was on farm. Same with fractals.
The devs are there for development but maybe you have recognized that they invited guilds to test their stuff because almost never will a dev ever be as good as a player.

Raids aren’t dungeons. What applies to dungeons doesn’t apply to raids. The big difference here is that, when dungeons were made, they were designed with relative ignorance of the combat systems for the game. When raids were designed, they were designed with an extremely well informed experience over the combat systems of the game.

Likewise, dungeons were nerfed purposefully and powercreeped. Fractals were also powercreeped, and then most recently nerfed again. The state that we see dungeons in now is nothing like how they were during beta, or launch. I still remember people making guides on how to get past the burrows in the lover’s crypt for Ascalon Catacombs. Funny thing, doing that dungeon at launch in level 35 masterwork gear was actually difficult.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

No body complains about the damage. They’re complaining about enrage timers.

Who is complaining? Some few people that put one post into the forums and never came back? Any serious player around me who was willing to beat the VG, has beaten it. And it has never been a question of asc vs. exotic but training, time and build/trait changes.

Emphasis mine. Your personal clique is not representative of what people think about raids. And it doesn’t matter what what your clique thinks about the asc. vs. exotic debate. The benefits are ascended are a fact. You can measure them and everything.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is nonsense. “Well designed” is a quality judgement. It can’t be a fact, because “well” is strictly an opinion. As is “very”. If I say they are not well designed, how do you prove me wrong, or prove yourself right?

They are well designed to beat the encounters in a huge amount of diverse team compositions and build orders. Wrong designed would be if no one could ever beat the timer at all so it has to be nerfed in the 2nd place.

You have no point here. “Well” is still an opinion. You are just being irritating.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Or it is a matter of group composition or particular builds.

Yes, but it isn’t a big problem while looking at Youtube to notice reams of successful kills with different team comps and builds.

If you frequent the thief forum, you’d notice that a chief complaint is that the daredevil is never taken into raids, that you can’t get into raids as a daredevil, and that the daredevil is the least used class in successful runs. Likewise, something that doesn’t get displayed is that these different team comps are all built around each other. They’re frequent groups of friends with enough spare gold to tailor-make their gear specifically to work well with other tailor-made gear. If you just build solo or PVP-style your team will have a lot of redundancy that has to be worked around, and these build choices can have a substantial impact. I.E. using scholar runes instead of strength in max might situations, using sigil of night/accuracy instead of strength in max might situations, building for direct bonuses instead of self-buffing, etc. and so on. Sigil of Night is 10% by itself, so the product of building for the group can have quite the substantial difference in performance.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Of course, the problem isn’t that people in ascended are wiping. it is that the system is “fine tuned” so that without ascended you’re chances of success, even on experienced runs, is gutted so drastically as to be a waste of time.

And that, dear writer, is bs. It’s not gutted drastically as to be a waste of time. Have you seen the VG kill? They had 3-4 people down several times. Even in PUGs that doesn’t happen at all on this encounter. They could have restarted the run like he said and having 1:30 min time left on a proper kill.

Have you seen the Gorseval kill? They failed the first time then had 9 seconds remaining the second time. Quit cherry picking.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Absolutely not. I’ll break it down simply: just because something is doable in exotic gear, doesn’t mean it is meant to be done in exotic gear.

Nobody said that. The guild just has shown that it is possible to do in exotics so nobody should complain about getting asc for the raid because it is not necessary!

Yes, they did. “- the raid is doable and balanced around being completed in full exotic – FACT” — Cyninja. Earlier in the thread.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The raids aren’t “finely tuned” for exotic. They’re tuned for ascended. It just happens that, much like how dungeons can be done in the buff, Raids can be done in Exotic Gear still. Raids are tuned more lightly for ascended than some people would like. So if a person can’t do it in exotic gear, the first and foremost thing they “aren’t doing right” is that they don’t have ascended.

No, the devs wanted to have the content to be designed for just ascended. That doesn’t mean it is only for ascended and that ppl can improve to show us such video like Deroir did.
Like I said before: There is a huge difference betweed the work of the devs and how well it is attuned with player skill.

Um.. yes, it does mean that it is only for ascended. That’s the whole point of designing things for ascended. If the system happens to be designed poorly or not tuned properly, that doesn’t change intent.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Another thing to note is that only ascended rings are cheap.
Ascended Weapons and Backpacks cost 150 gold each, and the amulet/trinkets run 35/40 laurels + 50 ectoplasm, meaning that you can only buy them after a long period of time. That or hope your guild is big enough, so instead of waiting a month you wait 3 weeks.

The usual casual isn’t even lvl 80 in 3 weeks. And nowadays there are many ways to get asc trinkets. You’ll even get them in the story mode, via collections, gold. So it’s very easy if you have the goal to do raids.

You can get particular stat sets of ascended trinkets that way. Personally, I’ve found the ascended nomad trinkets from LWS2 to only be good for salvaging.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Currently, I am making ascended weapons for all my toons. I already have 2 toons with full weapons, so given my remaining characters I only need 3,900 more gold to kit them out. Then 850 more gold for the backpacks.

Asc weapons are accountbound. With a little bit of intelligence you can reduce that sum if you swap weapons between your characters.

And change the runes and sigils every time I swap them, as the build that they are tailor made for may not necessarily be the same between classes, or even the same between any particular group. DnT guides themselves usually recommending having multiple copies of the same weapon with different sigils for this exact purpose: if you have to replace your rune set every time you alt, the prices get out of hand very quickly.

I suppose that, instead of giving my characters their own ascended weapons, I can just make 3-4 copies of every weapon and then have each one of them with different sigils, and allocate them to different classes. But that isn’t cheaper than just making ascended weapons for all my toons in the first place.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You’re forgetting luck. Luck is a factor, always. Skill itself is heavily weighted toward one side: you can theoretically have no contribution by assuming an utterly incompetent player, but a hyper-competent player can only achieve a bit more. You aren’t suddenly going to do more DPS than the max damage rotation just because you want it enough. There’s a hard limit there, to what your class is capable of and how much of an impact you can have.

Speaking about luck reminds me of the League of Legends Bronze players that were complaining about their team and that all higher ranked people just had luck in some games and therefore are in higher tiers. This is the biggest bs ever! There is no luck involved, only bad rng. But rng won’t stop you from defeating the bosses in a raid all the time.
Luck is NEVER EVER a factor.

You just contradicted yourself. “bad rng” IS LUCK.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

It is a perceptual mistake that people have, where they assume that an average player only does half the damage of a “skilled” player, because “half” is the middle of maximum and zero. It doesn’t work like that. If you have the competence to stand- in melee range and spam high DPS skills when off cooldown, then you’re already doing 90% of what a “skilled” player is. The “skilled” player is the one who’s most adept at dealing with random BS that comes their way.

I recommend you to play with a group of very good players. Just a short Ascalonian Catacombs run. As long as you are no top player you will struggle to keep the pace and if we would record your damage logs it would result in a dramatically decreased amount of dps on your side.

So basically you have no evidence and no bit of logic to assert the contrary, but just rest assured that you’re right somehow. Yeah, no. I don’t buy it for a second. I’ve joined guild run dungeons before. Several dozen times over the years. It is actually easier to maintain damage in them, as enemies are more likely to be disabled and pulled to a single location, and dangerous targets get focused so it is easier to stay alive.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Nothing you have listed gives and indication of that statement being misleading. At all. It is saying exactly what the issue is: Doing this in Exotic is impractical and hard. To get the experience to do the raid comfortably in exotic, you need to do it in ascended first. But why would you need to be comfortable in exotics then?

No, VG is fine in practicing with exotics. 1:30 min time left for a good organized guild group like KING is bringing enough time for mistakes on an organized group with non-speedrunners.

You’ve made this mistake about a dozen times now, so I’m going to stop you here. VG is not the raid.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

At the end of the raid, he says that it is doable, but everybody has to bring their A+ game. Everybody died on Gorseval and Sabetha, so unless there was some secret strategy change that went down between takes that he never talked about, then the raid’s are so hard that you shouldn’t be doing them in exotic gear.

LOL!
Thats bullkitten again. A raid should be hard and you should be forced to bring your A+ game. Of course you wipe several times. This is how to raid. You practice, you fail, you still practice and someday you will hopefully succeed. It depends on you and the group but not on the difference between exotics and ascended gear.
NoTrigger has also shown you that the Revenant wasn’t even playing an A+ game. They still beat it.

At what point exactly did I say that a raid should be easy? How far did you get into the paragraph before you closed your mind and opened our mouth? This paragraph doesn’t have to do with anything, and it is utter BS. If you want to say that the difference between exotic and ascended doesn’t play a part, then prove the math wrong somehow. This whole “i’m too cool for statistically significant differences to matter” thing is a big steaming pile of cow kitten .

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

No, it is not.

“I will not, in general, recommend anyone doing the raid in exotic gear as a group going in on their first run, regardless of what I’m about to show you, as even we were surprised by the tuning of some of the enrage timers”.

Emphasis mine.

Cyninja has already said what has to be said but I will go into detail to answer your bullkitten as well.

He does not recommend exotic gear, yes. He is recommending ascended one, ofc. I would also do this but his point clearly is: The raid wing is doable in exotics but if you can, acquire ascended gear.

“Regardless of what I am about to show you”. Anything in that video you submit as evidence is immediately contradicted by what the video itself says. If the guy making the video literally says not to use Exotic Gear, then what is the arguing point for exotic gear being adequate? How badly you can ignore what the author himself says?

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Except that it does have to do with ascended gear.

BS again. They have proven that the raid wing is doable with exotics.

You are purposefully ignoring everything I’ve demonstrated mathematically just to be contradictory. My numbers won’t go away because you can ignore the author of the video.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You just dismiss everything as “you’re not doing it right”. There is no right.

Yes, there is right and wrong for raids. For example using Dolyaks Signet on warrior is wrong bc it won’t help you any second longer to survive. And so on. I have seen so many hardcorely wrong builds inside the raid, it was no wonder people were failing over and over again. This is not open world content where you can play how you want.

The funny thing about DPS rotations and build compositions is that, every time they are improved, it immediately proves the previous set as inferior. Thus, anything you say about a meta comp is more likely than not, wrong as a necessity. Due to the complexity of how you can arrange the builds of a 10 man group, there isn’t a “set way” that anything can be done. Let alone, any sort of guiding hand that would leave people there.

Again, you’ve cut out an extremely important part of my post: there is no “guiding hand” or indicator of what a player is doing wrong. Sure, if they don’t meet the DPS requirements they can change their gear to do more damage (assuming that they can still survive), but even when that happens and you still lose, what then? I’ll give an example: Phantasmal Swordsman is the highest damaging Illusion for Mesmers. However, unless you sit there with a stop watch and time the hits and how much damage they do, you wouldn’t have access to that information. So if a raid comes down to something like which phantasm you use (or any other class equivalent), what indication is there that phantasmal duelist is the wrong one?

This applies for more than just damage. If players die, is the healer not healing well enough? What is the maximum healing? Is boon application not enough? What constitutes the threshold for useful boon application in a 10 man group? How would a player acquire this information in-game? I’ve seen plenty of guides myself, many of them suggesting different things for the same game mode. How do you tell which one is true when they all seem to fail equally?

Your perspective is skewed. The people who sit down with a stop watch and time things to get maximum DPS rotations are the vast minority. 99% of gamers are not like us. But, because you are surrounded by people who do the same, you can’t fathom that a person wouldn’t know this information, and would lack the ability to even conceptualize DPS.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

There isn’t some magic force that will guide you to an optimized DPS rotation and a perfect build for the encounter. You can’t even measure your DPS.

You can measure your DPS. PvP-Golem anyone + Dmg-numbers in the chat panel?

Now this is hilarious. Your damage numbers aren’t your DPS. That’s just how big a number you can get. Your DPS is your damage divided by time, which is a unit that isn’t provided in this game. I’ve taught enough people physics to know that “rate” is a concept not everyone understands easily. Hell, you yourself just got it wrong.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Your statement is made on the absurd notion that, after running the raid for 10 hours unsuccessfully, that the players aren’t trying harder the whole time.

Ofc, they are trying harder but as I said, the most unsuccessful groups don’t die to the enrage timer what equals it to the fact they are not performing well.

That doesn’t change the erroneous nature of your statement. You are defending the assertion that the only reason why it is people fail is because they aren’t doing it right, that gear tiers aren’t important. What do you think happens if, after a full work day of grinding on a raid boss? That the player never realizes that you need to stand in the green circle? That the red guardian needs conditions to be killed? In order to assert that gear tiers aren’t important, you have to assert a measure of incompetence onto people so severe that they would lack the basic skills to… be.

It is crazy. The difference between ascended and exotic is quickly calculated, and easily noticeable. Buying an extra 50 seconds in a fight is a big deal.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

They have to try harder to maximize DPS because of the enrage timer. This leads them to play risky and die early. Not everyone has a gaming mouse that lets them activate skills without clicking, and all of the recommended keybinds to get past this are a load, since many require you to completely stop moving to press a key.

I have a gaming mouse but i didn’t bind any ability on it, I am over 30 years old so my reaction time is slower than the average gamer and I am also clicking some abilities with the mouse. The thing is: I’ve beaten the encounters. Your argument is invalid!

You just contradicted yourself. You said people play poorly and lose because they mouse click their skills. Then you assert that mouseclicking skills doesn’t cause you to lose. So which is it?

Vinceman.4572:

You also don’t need to play “risky”. My recommendation here is to try the bosses without looking on the timer at first.
I’m 100% sure, you and your group won’t wipe the first 20 times due to not having enough time. Trust me, I have done the raid from the release day on and when we got to the point when we had no time left, dozens of corpses were laying on the ground the tries before. With some experience in learning the mechanics, you can improve your group skill and change things to achieve a better damage output.

This is another thing that is contradictory. You assert that people are losing because they aren’t playing well enough, but then say don’t worry about it and play it safe. When a player plays it safe, they attack with ranged weapons to avoid all of the mechanics, and end up doing terrible DPS because of it. So, they have to play risky in order to do enough deeps to win.

Are you saying that practicing failing tactics will somehow get you to succeed? Regardless, the first wipes you’ll get on a raid will always be because of learning the mechanics. That is a given, and isn’t actually relevant to the whole “Enrage Timer encourages riskier behavior” issue.

Vinceman.4572:

The timer is needed so that there won’t be a facetanking group of 8 Nomad-Hammer-Guards + Nomad-Boon-Strip + Condi-Tank which easily wiggle around and making a ridiculous thing out of a challenging content.

I’m not sure 8 nomad-hammer-guards would ever make it past gorseval or sabetha, timer or not. Either way, I’m not sure it is a problem. Having an entire tank group like that would mean that the players would have to contend with the OHKO mechanics of the raid for 45 mintues straight, per boss. You yourself are saying that most players die because of the raid mechanics themselves. Wearing tankier gear won’t solve that problem.

There’s many ways to build a boss to not be doable in full tank gear. Sabetha’s platform, for example. Enrage timers are a copy/paste from other MMOs, and are based on counteracting the extremely simplistic design of their content.

Vinceman.4572:

At last, if you are convinced that it is ok to stop moving for pressing a key, I tell you, that this is what I call lack of skill. It’s a shame for you and others but this challenging content is not made for players like these. It is no problem because you can enjoy 99% of the rest in GW2.

The whole point is that it isn’t O.K. to stop moving to press a key. But, the problem with having all of your keybinds allocated to the left hand is that, in the fight, you’ll be using 2-3 fingers to move and dodge, which makes activating some skills difficult.

Cyninja.2954:

It always amazes me how people try to spin and argue things into their favor no matter what is shown

You are utterly full of it. Your beliefs on this subject are not automatically correct and superior just because you hold them. What proof do you have that you aren’t the deluded one, spinning things into his own favor no matter what they are shown? And here you stand, talking down to people who disagree with you. It is insulting, and you should feel bad.

The biggest problem I have here is that I have not been given one piece of information that isn’t internally contradictory or utter nonsense. It is like this in every single thread I’ve heard. Why can’t you people just admit that, as the devs intended, raids are not casual in any sense? No, you always have to go on with hate speech about anyone who can’t do the raids because they’re stupid or something.

Cyninja.2954:

- the raid is doable and balanced around being completed in full exotic – FACT

This is not true at all. The devs recommended having full ascended for the raids, ergo the raids were balanced around full ascended.

Cyninja.2954:

-> the damage is managable (no 1-hit kills mechanics except for the ones that are ment to be)

No body complains about the damage. They’re complaining about enrage timers.

Cyninja.2954:

- the raid timers are very well designed for a group of full exotic – FACT

This is nonsense. “Well designed” is a quality judgement. It can’t be a fact, because “well” is strictly an opinion. As is “very”. If I say they are not well designed, how do you prove me wrong, or prove yourself right?

Cyninja.2954:

-> does no one even appreciate the fine tuning that the dps check (Goreseval) was so perfect that there were about 8-10 seconds left on the timer? Both other bosses had 1-2 minutes left

“Fine tuning” here essentially means “high probably to be a waste of time and food”. The more “fine tuned” something is, the less it appeals to budget players or casual players.

Cyninja.2954:

I- no expoits or use of massive damage combos are required to beat the bosses. Bursting down Goreseval with 6 condi berserkers is not required to finish the fight. It’s just an alternative that makes it easier

I’m sorry, but last I checked basic design is that something should be done without "exploits’. Its like congratulating the game for merely existing.

Cyninja.2954:

- obviously, if groups with full ascended are wiping for over x-amount of attempts without progress, it’s a matter of player skill (or lack theirof). Now we know for a fact that this is the case.

Or it is a matter of group composition or particular builds. Of course, the problem isn’t that people in ascended are wiping. it is that the system is “fine tuned” so that without ascended you’re chances of success, even on experienced runs, is gutted so drastically as to be a waste of time.

Cyninja.2954:

With all this being said:

- yes, the skillcap is high for running in exotic. No one said you get to run in with the bare minimum requirement and get a freeride. Important is, that it is possible
- yes, ascended will allow for more mistakes and leeway as far as damage goes. we knew this beforhand simply because of how far good groups could push the endtimer limit. Now we have more precise numbers
- remember, getting part ascended (trinkets first, weapons second, armor last) will cover a HUGE amount of the stat spread between full ascended and exotic. This being said, getting full ascended trinkets is VERY cheap. We can deduce that ascended armor, with the current state of the market, might be a bad investment for raiding.

Something I find interesting are nude runs. These are runs of dungeons where a group of players have taken off their armor, and fight the boss handicapped. They are capable of succeeding, of course. Does this mean that the bosses were designed for nudists? Does that mean that if a player can’t complete a nude run of a dungeon, that they are incompetent and should demeaned?

Absolutely not. I’ll break it down simply: just because something is doable in exotic gear, doesn’t mean it is meant to be done in exotic gear. The raids aren’t “finely tuned” for exotic. They’re tuned for ascended. It just happens that, much like how dungeons can be done in the buff, Raids can be done in Exotic Gear still. Raids are tuned more lightly for ascended than some people would like. So if a person can’t do it in exotic gear, the first and foremost thing they “aren’t doing right” is that they don’t have ascended.

Another thing to note is that only ascended rings are cheap. Ascended Weapons and Backpacks cost 150 gold each, and the amulet/trinkets run 35/40 laurels + 50 ectoplasm, meaning that you can only buy them after a long period of time. That or hope your guild is big enough, so instead of waiting a month you wait 3 weeks.

Currently, I am making ascended weapons for all my toons. I already have 2 toons with full weapons, so given my remaining characters I only need 3,900 more gold to kit them out. Then 850 more gold for the backpacks.

Cyninja.2954:

and finally the most important aspect:

- skill is more important than gear!

Wasn’t this the major aspect people were fretting over? Sure, to maximise your chances of success you’ll want players with ascended gear (that’s simple math). But in the end, the player behind the keyboard decides how successful the raid will be.

You’re forgetting luck. Luck is a factor, always. Skill itself is heavily weighted toward one side: you can theoretically have no contribution by assuming an utterly incompetent player, but a hyper-competent player can only achieve a bit more. You aren’t suddenly going to do more DPS than the max damage rotation just because you want it enough. There’s a hard limit there, to what your class is capable of and how much of an impact you can have.

It is a perceptual mistake that people have, where they assume that an average player only does half the damage of a “skilled” player, because “half” is the middle of maximum and zero. It doesn’t work like that. If you have the competence to stand- in melee range and spam high DPS skills when off cooldown, then you’re already doing 90% of what a “skilled” player is. The “skilled” player is the one who’s most adept at dealing with random BS that comes their way.

Cyninja.2954:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

“I will not, in general, recommend anyone doing the raid in exotic gear as a group going in on their first run, regardless of what I’m about to show you, as even we were surprised by the tuning of some of the enrage timers”.

Your interpretation of what Deroir said is very faulty. The reason for him stating this was due to so many factors which are subjective and not part of the game that to bring it up in this context is missleading. Ofcorse he will recommend players run with ideal gear to begin with due to:

Nothing you have listed gives and indication of that statement being misleading. At all. It is saying exactly what the issue is: Doing this in Exotic is impractical and hard. To get the experience to do the raid comfortably in exotic, you need to do it in ascended first. But why would you need to be comfortable in exotics then?

At the end of the raid, he says that it is doable, but everybody has to bring their A+ game. Everybody died on Gorseval and Sabetha, so unless there was some secret strategy change that went down between takes that he never talked about, then the raid’s are so hard that you shouldn’t be doing them in exotic gear.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

His advice is that you must have ascended gear before you step into the raid…

No, his advice is: Ascended armor is recommended and if you can achieve that, it’ll be fine. But the whole video prove that you don’t need to have any asc item at all to be successful.

No, it is not.

“I will not, in general, recommend anyone doing the raid in exotic gear as a group going in on their first run, regardless of what I’m about to show you, as even we were surprised by the tuning of some of the enrage timers”.

Emphasis mine.

Vinceman.4572:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

People are spending 10 hours on the first boss, and not getting “lucky”. “Skill” is of no comfort.

The fact you are missing here is: People are spending 10 hours on the first boss without improving because they are playing their classes wrong or they are lacking skill. It has 0.0% to do with asc gear.

Except that it does have to do with ascended gear. You just dismiss everything as “you’re not doing it right”. There is no right. There isn’t some magic force that will guide you to an optimized DPS rotation and a perfect build for the encounter. You can’t even measure your DPS. Your statement is made on the absurd notion that, after running the raid for 10 hours unsuccessfully, that the players aren’t trying harder the whole time.

Vinceman.4572:

Besides that, many if not almost all unsuccessful groups don’t die due to the enrage mode after the time was running out. They are dying way earlier due to several mistakes like never ever dodging teleport circles, there’s insufficient cc, being too slow with cc (a.k.a. mouse klicking spells), being unable to avoid seeker damage (also being too slow due to klicking spells with the mouse), not 4-manning the green circle or if anyone of the circle group is down, there is a lack of an emergency team.

They have to try harder to maximize DPS because of the enrage timer. This leads them to play risky and die early. Not everyone has a gaming mouse that lets them activate skills without clicking, and all of the recommended keybinds to get past this are a load, since many require you to completely stop moving to press a key.

NoTrigger.8396:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

NoTrigger.8396:

i dont nitpick his performance. i am just poiting out that there is a lot that players could do better outside of gear/builds and gameplay/execution is still the biggest factor when it comes to enrage timers.

also i agree with his advice.
what i dont agree with is leading people to believe ascended gear is absolutely must-have before they step into raids, because its bad for the community and the raids as a whole and could turn players away from raiding especially with the huge grind this game has turned into since HoT release.
and if you call my post nitpicky, i am just as nitpicky about my own gameplay and if people in the community were more nitpicky about their own gameplay there would be a lot less QQ threads about enrage timers and stuff like that.

His advice is that you must have ascended gear before you step into the raid… This post is a big rambly tangent. I don’t care how much you criticize your own gameplay. The fact is that you are asserting a phantom (and heavily debatable) quality that will suddenly make it all better. “Skill” can’t be quantified, and since performance is variable you are basically saying “hey, if you get lucky, you won’t need ascended”. People are spending 10 hours on the first boss, and not getting “lucky”. “Skill” is of no comfort.

before players go like “yo need ascended gear before i can beat this boss” they should work on improving their skills. that is all i am saying. you could be a terrible player and ascended gear wont magically kill the boss for you. or you could improve as a player and beat the boss in exotic gear. ascended gear helps a bit but it will not turn a bad player or group into a good one.

https://youtu.be/0NBbAZwKXC4?t=1m36s
take this advice and think a bit about it because it is pretty much true no matter which game you play.
and every player who believes he is playing perfectly is a bad player, and if you believe exotic gear is holding you back then i dont really know how to help you.

The difference between exotic and ascended is quantifiable and makes for a significant difference in performance. Take any success in exotic gear, shave 12% off of the time it took them to complete the event, and then you have the time it would’ve taken in full ascended. I.E. in the original video Gorseval was killed in 6: 51. With ascended, that kill would’ve been in 6:02. That is 49 seconds of extra time to be less skilled, to be downed and rezzed, to press the wrong button, to not have an optimized DPS rotation, etc.

“Skills” is not quantifiable. There’s no way to measure how well you are doing, or how theoretically good you could be in a given circumstance. There is no threshold where magically you’ll be able to do the raid reliably. You are asserting something that cannot be disproved and requires no evidence to assert. The fact is that ascended will allow you to magically kill the boss.

NoTrigger.8396:

i dont nitpick his performance. i am just poiting out that there is a lot that players could do better outside of gear/builds and gameplay/execution is still the biggest factor when it comes to enrage timers.

also i agree with his advice.
what i dont agree with is leading people to believe ascended gear is absolutely must-have before they step into raids, because its bad for the community and the raids as a whole and could turn players away from raiding especially with the huge grind this game has turned into since HoT release.
and if you call my post nitpicky, i am just as nitpicky about my own gameplay and if people in the community were more nitpicky about their own gameplay there would be a lot less QQ threads about enrage timers and stuff like that.

His advice is that you must have ascended gear before you step into the raid… This post is a big rambly tangent. I don’t care how much you criticize your own gameplay. The fact is that you are asserting a phantom (and heavily debatable) quality that will suddenly make it all better. “Skill” can’t be quantified, and since performance is variable you are basically saying “hey, if you get lucky, you won’t need ascended”. People are spending 10 hours on the first boss, and not getting “lucky”. “Skill” is of no comfort.

Congratulations, you can nitpick his performance. Doesn’t mean that I or anyone else will necessarily do better, or that his advice to start with ascended in the first place and ignore the whole video is now wrong.

“I will not, in general, recommend anyone doing the raid in exotic gear as a group going in on their first run, regardless of what I’m about to show you, as even we were surprised by the tuning of some of the enrage timers”.

The video is of no comfort. It asserts you can do this raid in full exotic gear, but only after having done the raid countless times with ascended gear in the first place.

Jana.6831:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I suppose it is a moot question.

Not really since the topic of this thread is solo PvE (not only HoT).
The point isn’t how well you can kill mobs in a group full of boons, the question is if you’re equal to other classes alone.
And well, fury every 20 seconds isn’t that great.

Run Critical Strikes. Unrelenting Strikes + No Quarter means permanent fury starting with the second attack against the first enemy.

Jana.6831:

RedArachnid: I do wonder if you’re really talking about solo PvE (“all just zerg running” – zerg or zerk?)
The problem thief has got since June: No boons. All other classes: Endless self stacking boons.

I suppose it is a moot question. One of the things I’ve noticed is that, while playing on HoT, very rarely am I by myself. That said, thieves are very good at stacking the best boon for themselves: Fury. Well, power thieves anyway. Condi thieves are pretty good at self stacking might and vulnerability.

The only time I end up alone is when I’m doing things like running flax farms. Doing that, I still find thief DPS to be more than sufficient. I come out swinging with 12k weakening charges and 13k vaults. Most enemies don’t live past a single fist flurry, let alone a vault-vault-bound-weakening charge combo. I can even kill enemies with impact strike.

Maybe vanilla thieves have a problem, as their best option against a group of enemies is to use black powder and then auto or pistol whip. But Daredevil Staff rips apart groups of enemies. The DD is a class that does more damage through dodging than others do through their auto attack, and so they maintain damage much more easily. Also, if you are talking about regular enemies, condition ramp up time becomes a big issue. After 2.5 seconds I’ve already killed multiple enemies.

Azure.8670:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Right now, I’d rank Daredevil DPS as #3, behind two other classes: Herald, Tempest. And tempest is a technicality, as there are plenty of situations where Daredevil does more.

Daredevil DPS in my experience is highly variable. It depends on several things:

#1: The location of the target. Next to a ridge or against a wall is preferred.
#2: The size of the target. Bigger is better.
#3: How well paced their attacks are. An even paced moveset is best.
#4: If they have projectiles that can be reflected, and how well I can predict it.

It all comes down to how much I can cut loose with Weakening Charge. Against a near-ledge target or a cornered enemy, I can cut loose a full fury with Weakening Charge, and do just massive damage. Against large targets, too.

Against smaller targets I have to use the Bound -> Vault -> Charge -> Auto to maximize DPS, with Fist Flurry thrown in for good measure. If the target is particularly troublesome, I can tank it by standing in its face and using vault in place to avoid each attack. That tactic is… surprisingly effective against certain enemies. Against enemies with wide sweeping attacks, I’ll occasionally use dust strike -> auto -> dust strike to disable their moves. Or sometimes I’ll just chain my stuns to keep something disabled.

Even against dangerous enemies I can stay engaged for quite the time. I definitely recommened channeled vigor as a heal, because its healing potential is massive and that extra 1.5 dodges means quite a bit of maintained engagement time.

As for the competitors…

Tempest beats Daredevil against large targets, stationary targets, and enemies that must be engaged at range. As much as I like unload, the fact is that font + fireball is better. Tempest loses to Daredevil against mobile targets, or targets that you have to engage at melee range, and also in situations where sustained damage is unavoidable. The glass is real here, but I’ve found the DD more than capable of surviving.

Herald beats Daredevil in most circumstances, except that in which sustained damage is unavoidable in melee. Heralds don’t have a real “heal” as much as they have a few utility skills that grant health along with their other functions, so I’ve found that in bouts where I need sustain, the Herald starts to fall short. Otherwise, the herald does stupid good DPS by just auto attacking with sword. There is a note here: Heralds have to sacrifice a lot to deal with projectiles, but thieves sacrifice very little.

Well if you’re talking power, I’m pretty positive berserker has higher dps. If we are including condi builds thief isn’t even in the top 5. Engi and berserker blow it out the water. Also as for the healing, herald heal is top tier to the point of being broken. Swapping between Glint and shiro you can heal so often you never stop attacking Champs solo.

Thief is probably around reaper dps. Thief is higher but when enemy drops below 50 it’s much closer with reaper possibly doing more, but I think thief still wins

I have to disagree about herald healing. Swapping between Glint and Shiro has me awkwardly using the hammer to try and proc Enchanted Daggers because I have run out of health. Glints heal, while theoretically limitlesss, is really an invulnerability skill that comes with the benefit of converting damage to health. Because of this, I frequently find my health ticking down much faster than it accumulates, and stalling for time while I wait for Facet of Light to come off recharge.

Now, I don’t play warrior, and I haven’t played engi in years, so I do not have experience with how much damage they output (although Reaper is definitely behind DD in my experience. Weakening Charge does more damage than gravedigger and in half the time). Though unless I am missing my guess, if you include condi builds, Daredevils are still in the top 5, as that only adds warriors and engis (on top of eles and heralds).

Though I have watched some videos on condi berserkers, and though I can see them hitting 18k DPS for certain time periods against a golem… I’m getting up to 6.7k per hit on Weakening Charge, and 21k on vault, all just zerg running. If I calculate it right, Fist Flurry is hitting for 62k damage total (over 1.75 seconds, that would amount to 35k DPS). There’s going to be down time for initiative regen, bound, and auto attacks for proper positioning, but overall I wouldn’t throw my hands up and say that condi berserkers necessarily beat power daredevils.

Personally I find the pseudo-academic style of this video better.

So much so that I quote it regularly. For example: Haruhi Suzumiya ruined anime for 10 years or so.

EDIT: You know, I’m actually going to talk a bit about this more. Watch my linked video, first.

I actually have a bit of the same feeling that Fevir has. The genre is bit stale.

My first “MMO” was phantasy star online, and phantasy star universe. Those games are team based instanced action games with a fairly straightforward story. Good sci-fi universe that I really got in to, and I felt attached to the world. PSU was kind of cool in that everything was a level: your profession was leveled up, your skills were leveled up, your crafting and weaponry was leveled up… you developed a sense of character, and your appearance itself was highly stylized.

Second MMO I played was Runescape, which was a point and click Java based grinding simulator, but had enough interesting lore for me to get in to, and hey, it was easy enough to play while doing other things. That grind and inconvenience brought something though: true accomplishment. In runescape, if you were rich, it wasn’t just a bunch of kids complaining that they couldn’t afford all the stuff they want. You were rich. You would exude wealth and power in your every step. The things you did in that game were an accomplishment, and the trek around the world felt like an actual world. And the quests, they were by far the best questing system I’ve ever seen in an MMO. Basically you were given a hint and a general direction, and were left to your own devices. Sometimes it ended in tragedy if you weren’t prepared, and you had no idea how prepared you were supposed to be. Best part of Runescape was Dungeoneering, which is a randomly generated scaling dungeon system. Though I don’t have a desire for most of the game now, that randomly generated dungeon still calls for me. As do the quests.

Third MMO I played was City of Heroes (AKA my MMO), which was a traditional MMO in how most things worked. Now, the other worlds I liked, but in CoH I thrived. I lived. Everything was so customizable that unless you specifically built yourself to be like another player, there was no one else quite like you. The character creator was epic, so much that no one looked like you. In that world you got to be a cheesy hero, a serious hero, a cheesy villain, a serious villain, an anti-hero, basically whatever your mind wanted. Everything had character, and the whole world was in on it. The animations and moves felt great, and with proper customization you could become insanely strong. The plot lines that coursed through the game were varied, and the culture so thick that it generated in-game memes. Whatever hero you could think of would come alive in this game, and because of this I still think of them to this day.

I picked up DCAU for a month. Then I left DCAU. Didn’t much like it. Hard trinity game with non-intuitive controls that felt spammy, and a fraction of the character. Every mission was “press f”.

Guild Wars 2… is the game I play because City of Heroes was killed. While I can admire what it has accomplished from a technical aspect, there are many things that are just lost. There’s a saying: Its the journey, not the destination. The thing with GW2 is that, for convenience, it eliminated a lot of the journey. They’ve made a vast and wondrous world, and all of those locations have no meaning to them. The things you accomplish in the world are mostly for some kind of achievement and little else (seriously, renown hearts are a flop for a very big reason). The character customization is 75% face, which is the part of you that no one ever sees, so I’m basically a faceless mook in an army. The storyline is generic mystic-babble that is not witty, intriguing, or differentiates itself meaningfully from any other fantasy setting. Various design decisions have left a lot of the game’s enemies gutted and uninteresting. Due to the very obvious advantages gained between different specs, any class I play is basically one or two builds, and I am indistinguishable from others of my same class.

A lot of these things are done for convenience sake, and I am certain they are alleviating many tensions that games I have not played have, but as a game itself I am not nearly as invested. Tyria isn’t a “world” like the ones I am familiar with. It is just the place where gameplay happens. My toons aren’t “characters” that feel and look distinct that I can be interested in. They’re just the avatars that are necessary to make the gameplay happen. The story… half the time I don’t even pay attention. I’d rather listen to some British guy ramble about it for half an hour, so I can get the gist of what is going on. The achievements and missions aren’t meaningful, they just provide the direction for gameplay to happen.

But hey, at least the gameplay is good, and the economy is fairly solid. More importantly, there’s nothing that really grasps my attention of other games. I thought EQ Next might be interesting, what with trying to make an MMO out of Minecraft, but that is on life support last I checked.

Right now, I’d rank Daredevil DPS as #3, behind two other classes: Herald, Tempest. And tempest is a technicality, as there are plenty of situations where Daredevil does more.

Daredevil DPS in my experience is highly variable. It depends on several things:

#1: The location of the target. Next to a ridge or against a wall is preferred.
#2: The size of the target. Bigger is better.
#3: How well paced their attacks are. An even paced moveset is best.
#4: If they have projectiles that can be reflected, and how well I can predict it.

It all comes down to how much I can cut loose with Weakening Charge. Against a near-ledge target or a cornered enemy, I can cut loose a full fury with Weakening Charge, and do just massive damage. Against large targets, too.

Against smaller targets I have to use the Bound -> Vault -> Charge -> Auto to maximize DPS, with Fist Flurry thrown in for good measure. If the target is particularly troublesome, I can tank it by standing in its face and using vault in place to avoid each attack. That tactic is… surprisingly effective against certain enemies. Against enemies with wide sweeping attacks, I’ll occasionally use dust strike -> auto -> dust strike to disable their moves. Or sometimes I’ll just chain my stuns to keep something disabled.

Even against dangerous enemies I can stay engaged for quite the time. I definitely recommened channeled vigor as a heal, because its healing potential is massive and that extra 1.5 dodges means quite a bit of maintained engagement time.

As for the competitors…

Tempest beats Daredevil against large targets, stationary targets, and enemies that must be engaged at range. As much as I like unload, the fact is that font + fireball is better. Tempest loses to Daredevil against mobile targets, or targets that you have to engage at melee range, and also in situations where sustained damage is unavoidable. The glass is real here, but I’ve found the DD more than capable of surviving.

Herald beats Daredevil in most circumstances, except that in which sustained damage is unavoidable in melee. Heralds don’t have a real “heal” as much as they have a few utility skills that grant health along with their other functions, so I’ve found that in bouts where I need sustain, the Herald starts to fall short. Otherwise, the herald does stupid good DPS by just auto attacking with sword. There is a note here: Heralds have to sacrifice a lot to deal with projectiles, but thieves sacrifice very little.

CETheLucid.3964:

Essence Snow.3194:

Capitalism is not the best system we’ve ever created. The best system we’ve had in modern society is a mixture.

… Based more on a free market capitalist system than anything else. The dogma in this thread as a whole is astounding.

“I came from an ex-communist country man, let me tell you: It sucked. Capitialism is the better system.”

“I’m from a capitalist country and the old system that you suffered under was better because I am right and you are wrong! I clearly know what I am talking about!”

Gotta love that kind of response. It’s that kind of crap you can’t make up.

“Oh? Someone who’s experienced the reality of my misguided ideals and is speaking out against it? Better dismiss them and assure everyone I’m right.”

“After all, that dictator guy was just doing it wrong.”

I hear it’s been called the ideal dilemma before. Essentially, they are comparing practical capitalism to ideal socialism. The unfair advantage being that they completely ignore the negative aspects of human nature when dealing with socialism, but focus heavily on it in capitalism. If you want to talk ideals, then you might as well trumpet anarchy. They take shelter into the fact that real socialism hasn’t been done yet. How do you know it wasn’t real? Well, it didn’t work of course!

You’ll have to explain what you mean by that. In return, I’ll explain what effective power is.

Effective power is the amount of “power” that any set has after it has been scaled up for critical hits. This measurement is used because power scales with damage linearly, so when comparing sets you can tell at a glance which one will do more.

Effective power itself isn’t just power. Technically it is power x (chance to crit x damage on crit + chance to not crit). For example, Sinister has 1878 base power, but with a 46.8% chance to crit, this is:

Effctive power = 1878 x (0.468 × 1.5 + 0.532) = 1878 × 1.234 = 2,317

So with crits included, it is roughly the same as if you had 2,317 power. Viper has 2401 effective power, meaning that Viper does more direct damage.

Now, if what you are doing is comparing an ascended set with an exotic set… well you’re not being logical. The numbers I posted are both assuming exotic tiered gear. If you want to see which one is better, you should compare Verata to Yassith. Though the trinkets might be a bit hard to acquire…

Monk Tank.5897:

I still like Sinister > Viper for direct damage.

Unless I have missed something, Viper does more direct damage. It has higher effective power, and against many environmental objects you can’t crit anyway.

Sheobix.8796:

Jesus the calculus nerds came out to play tonight

Why can’t yall just play with Rabid/Rampagers like all the normal condition peasants?

I’m going to tell you a secret: mathematics, logic, and the art of argument are all a convoluted way of flexing our muscles to other people. it is about being the big, macho dude, but “macho” here is in a non-conventional way.

We’re debating the fact of the matter, much like how meat heads at the beach debate who is “strongest” by posturing and flexing. While fact exists there (one guy is the “strongest”), there’s going to be a lot of struggle to come to that fact.

Another “conspiracy to explain away common sense” thread. Let me take a big sigh and get to it.

#1: There will always be a “best class”, by the sheer impossibility that is balancing every combination of skills with every combination of classes in every situation. One will always come out on top.

#2: “Broken” and “OP” is a wholly subjective subject. You can’t measure or quantify how broken things are, and every time Anet slightly tweaks some numbers there is a vast ripple throughout the entire game. Things can be “OP” by the smallest of objective margins.

#3: The effects that any class has at different levels of play are massive. What is "OP at one level of play won’t necessarily be “OP” at another level. Also known as skill floor and skill ceiling.

#4:The focus of players can be extremely singular. Even if one class isn’t on top of every gaming category, if it is on top of the only one that a particular player cares about, it is suddenly oppressive how good that class is.

#5: There is absolutely nothing to be gained by making a class deliberately OP and having players complain about it. It accomplishes nothing.

If you are going to assert that Anet is deliberately making a class overpowered, at least have a reasonable explanation as to what this would accomplish, otherwise you’re left with this:

#1: Make random clas OP
#2: People complain about it.
#3: ???
#4: PROFIT!

Blaine beat me to it. Yeah, that first equation assumed that Viper didn’t receive any duration buffs.

As far as when each set beats the other, that is on a class and build specific basis. Generally it is the quicker a condition would expire, the faster you get extra ticks, which means that Viper gains an advantage quicker.

xephias.4098:

I’ve only started playing guild wars for just a little over a month and I main a condi ranger.
I’ve been wondering if viper is really generally better than sinister whilst having the length of the fights into consideration. I mean, I’m a total noob and know next to nothing about boss fights yet (unless its a map boss) but are the fights really gonna be long enough for the +duration to kick in?

The answer is yes. On two counts. First is that the ranger has a very diverse set of damaging conditions (plenty of bleed, poison, and burn) and disabling conditions (cripple, chill, immobilize) so duration increases them all quite substantially. Second is that the ranger has a large number of short duration conditions that pulse rapidly, meaning that extra condi duration starts kicking in very quickly (within 5 seconds sometimes).

If you’re by yourself, this is basically any veteran mob. In a group it is some elites and any champion mob. Or a particularly stubborn/evasive vet. I own a condi ranger myself, and Full Viper has been excellent. I sit at 91% condi duration with super veggie pizza and no focusing crystal, and watching my burns tick for 8k, bleed for 3k, poison for 3k against entire groups of enemies is super satisfying.

Guys, the Necro is the only class where toughness and vitality are both equal.

For overall durability, effective HP is the product of your armor and your health. You can think of it like a geometric shape: armor and health are the sides of a rectangle, and your effective health is the area it occupies.

With a fixed perimeter, the maximum area you can acquire is a square. That is, equal points of investment in both directions. Because the necromancer is already at a point where base armor (1920) is nearly equal to 10x base health (19,212), toughness and vitality both give roughly an equal amount of durability. At least before you factor in complicated what-ifs.

What the OP is probably feeling isn’t that Toughness is good for Necros, but that Toughness is bad for other classes. Other classes aren’t at that even benchmark that Necro sits at, so for them toughness is a far more inefficient investment than Vitality is. Even warrior is best off investing 290 vitality before going for toughness.

Zerikin.1593:

Nice guide. Which classes/builds have enough DPS for the SCAR lane?

That is a good question.

Truth be told,t his guide is incomplete. Mostly because I lack the knowledge to truly complete it. To have a complete guide, I would have a builds and class specific tips section. But, I am not nearly that experienced yet. So far, I’ve only taken my Tempest to the event, as she is full ascended Zerker, and was chosen specifically because she can do max damage with no CC.

But to answer you question… theoretically any of them if you’ve built full glass and are wicked good at the game. But if I were to pick classes out by experience…

#1: Tempest. This one is obvious. Lava Font, Meteor Storm, Glyph of Storms, Ice bow… the Tempest lets lose unparalleled damage at range, even if ole gerenty boy tries to step outside of them all the time. For when ti is safe to approach, overloads also send out a lot of damage and give a lot of buffs. The tempest specialization isn’t completely necessary, as a regular elementalist can dish out nearly as much damage. Fire/Ar/X is the desired build, of course.

#2: Chronomancer. The thing with Gerent is that it doesn’t target illusions that much. Or at least I haven’t seen it target illusions, as it usually goes right for me. In theory, a chronomancer can set up 3 swordsmen fairly quickly, which will dish out a lot of damage (particularly in a domination/illusions/chrono build) long term. The second thing is that most chronomancers are restrained by the whole “NO CC!” thing, but in SCAR lane a chrono is free to cut lose with every well and timewarp they can muster, doing a bit of damage but massively buffing teammates Melee when safe, of course. The drawback is that the Greatsword isn’t the best for personal damage. I have no comment on condi chronos. A regular mesmer should have comparable damage, but nowhere near the buffs.

#3: The Engineer. Scrapper may or may not be beneficial, as that spec is a mixed bag, but the damage the Engi can do at range is undeniable. Whether going hybrid or direct damage, grenades and mortar kit unload the hurt, and elixir gun + bombs are capable of bursting and escaping quite quickly. I haven’t played engi in years, so their exact specs are a mystery to me, but if they’re anything like when I last played them, then they’re still a really solid ranged class.

#4: Dragonhunter. This is probably one of my least played classes, but from what I have played the Dragonhunter is actually really good at ranged damage. Longbow skills 2 and 4 pack quite the wallop, and their recharge is short. The Melee skills are also extremely bursty, letting you get in and out fast while doing high damage. The traps are bursty and fast as well. Group fury and quickness help as well. Special note here, the myraid of pulls and lockds that a DH has makes it the best class for taking down Chak rushes. Base guardian could be good as well, as the scepter is still capable of dishing out a ton of damage to something as large as the Gerent. I’ve been using Zeal/Radiance/Dragonhunter, but I’m not an expert, so if someone has more knowledge on the subject I would appreciate the input.

Other classes… I am not certain I can vouch for their ranged damage. Things to check on other gerents would be

#1: Coalescence of Ruin. The Gerent might be large enough that the skill hits multiple times. If it does, then Revs/Heralds would be excellent for the fight.

#2: Several people I’ve played with are insisting that Reaper is good, because even in glass they can face tank the Gerent in melee. Ranged damage would leave something to be desired.

#3:Anything to do with warrior. Their ranged capabilities are unknown to me.

#4: Ranger damage. Rapid Fire and Barrage are decent burst, but I’m not actually sure how reliable pets are for damage here, let alone how much DPS the ranger outputs while actually being at a distance.

Nash.2681:

Great guide, very well written and even though it’s a huge wall of text enjoyable to read. Might even deserve a sticky?

There’s just one thing I’m missing- how to I prevent getting a kittening DC right before that big bug is about to bite the dust, since that’s by far the biggest difficulty for all HoT Meta’s- being able to stay until the very end and not getting kicked out of the game all the time >_> .

Use the 64 bit client? That’s the only method I know of.

Misguided.5139:

One of the best tips I have seen for this fight that very few seem to know: when fighting the Chak Gerent, stack underneath its belly. The Avalanche can not hit you there (you can stand in the circles no not take damage) and the only thing you really have to worry about is the purple donuts.

Personally, I’ve never had the guts to check it. If it is right it is awesome, but if it is wrong I’ll end up failing the event for about a hundred people.

SECTION 4
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Alright, that is all well and good. After your first or second fight with the Gerent, his moves should become pretty obvious. But, if you’ve played this event, you’ve probably noticed that it mostly fails another way: some lane is unable to get the Gerent to emerge. Here is where I will tell you how to do that, and ideally how many people you should have doing that. While this section is last, it is the most important section, because if you do not have this part down, you won’t even stand a chance.

Ogre lane

This lane is the easiest. There are eggs scattered about the sides of the lane. They’re fused to the ground, but have gigantic blue glowing tops. To get the Gerent to emerge, you are to destroy as many eggs as possible. The more eggs you destroy, the better time you’ll have. The eggs respawn after awhile, too. So, the strategy for this lane is to spread out among the eggs, then kill the eggs. End of strategy. Key word here: spread out.

Ideally you’d want at least 20 people on this lane. The lane handles scaling fairly well, so extras should be sent to this and Novus lane. Keep the numbers between these two lanes about equal.

The Chak rush is not that much of a problem. When they spawn they’ll march by, so stop destroying eggs to go and kill the Chak Rush, then head back to destroying eggs.

Throughout the lane there will be temp weapons called Ogre Smashers. These are not necessary under any circumstance. If you feel these will help you do more damage, go ahead, but for the most part everyone ignores these.

The hardest part about this lane is that aggressive chak will still spawn during this event, adding a bit of pressure. They shouldn’t be too hard, though. Most will be cleaved with the eggs, and the rest can be killed fairly easily.

Novus Lane

This is the second-easiest lane. For this lane, there will be ley-energy collectors on the sides of the tunnel. Your job is to destroy these collectors, then pick up the bundles of ley energy they drop, and throw those bundles into a gigantic golem situated in the center of the lane. The more charge the golem has, the easier the lane will be. At the end of the event the Golem will arise, Gerent will emerge, and the two will engage in epic Kaiju battle.

Special note, this lane has Chak Bracers. These are flying guys who are immune to damage, buff allies, and have a break bar. They will buff the Chak Gerent, so these guys are CC on sight.

The Golem is temperamental, and will frequently stand there fantasizing about what it would be like to be a real boy. To get the Golem to do its job and actually fight Gerent, you need to get Gerent to rush into the golem. So, when Gerent emerges, if Gerent does not have a break bar, stand in-line with the golem, so that when Gerent charges the golem will accept his role in life, and start pounding the ley-eating crap out of king.

The Chak rush, again, is not much of a problem. When the squadron comes around, stop throwing bundles and attack the chak.

Ideally for this lane, you’d want 20 people. Each spread out to the 3 or 4 collectors at each event. This lane handles scaling pretty well, so extra people should go to here or Ogre. You’ll want about an equal number spread between the two lanes.

SCAR lane

This is the second hardest lane. For this lane, a couple of NPCs will charge a gignatic thumper turret. Your job is defend them as they do this. However, squadron of chak will spawn and start heading for the turret. These Chak are aggressive to everyone, and there’s a lot of them, so spread out around the thumper and kill these Chak as they spawn.

Special note: this lane also has Chak Bracers. CC on sight.

The Chak rush is not a problem. You’re already killing every chak in sight to protect the thumper. Just focus on the squadron as they run by.

Now, for the real reason why this lane is hard: You know that whole “don’t break his bar” thing above? Yeah, forget it. The Thumper Turret will automatically break the bar of Gerent. Because of that scrub turret, you will spend the vast majority (98% easily) of this fight dealing with a mobile, aggressive, purple death donut spamming Gerent. Oh those donuts, they are real. The SCAR lane Gerent is the most severe of DPS races, as the Gerent will not stay in one place for long, and it frequently is not safe to melee the gerent. For this lane, you will need high ranged damage, which is why you’ll frequently see 10 staff tempests here. High damage gear and builds are recommended.

Second note, while you don’t want Gerent rushing further into lane, you also don’t want Gerent rushing into the turret, either. I’ve never been unlucky enough to have been in a party where Gerent squeeded out a death donut on the turret, but from what I hear it leads to failure quite quickly.

For this lane, you’ll want 20 of your beefiest ranged DPSers. You won’t want more, as scaling up makes this DPS race even tighter, and random players on random classes can wreck your chances.

Nuhoch lane

This is it. The lane. The lane that makes pugging this event exponentially harder. The lane that requires taking full advantage of the squad system to complete. The whole reason why people write guides.

For this lane, your goal is to climb the sides of the lane, stand on top of the glowing fungi that stick out of the lane, stomp on the nodules, and kill the mushrooms that spawn. This is deceptively easy, as the nodule respawn rate is tight, and is tied to the mushrooms that spawn, so kill those ASAP. Spread out as much as possible to make for the most efficient stomping ever. While the mushrooms themselves do not count as “progress”, they do limit progress, so kill them.

The mushrooms themselves are tough. Vets and elites can spawn if you aren’t spread out. They do high damage, they spam knockbacks constantly (and at that height, it can be fatal), and when they die they self-destruct, capable of killing most classes in a single hit. Be mobile, bring stability, be strong, be aware, be spread out.

Bouncing Mushrooms is a necessary mastery. It makes the time you need to get on those fungi and spread out much shorter.

It is so tough that you’ll want to end the DPS phase early. 30 seconds before the Chak Gerent re-burrows, leave early and get into position to spread out and stomp mushrooms. There is some good news, though. I saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico. But aside from that: The Chak Gerent in this lane is the runt of the litter. He has far less health than the other lanes, so the 30 seconds you use to run early to spread out among the fungi should be no hindrance at all. Nuhoch lane is the lane most likely to get a 2nd event kill.

For this event, you will want three sub-groups in your squad. A north party, dedicated to climbing and stomping nodules on the north side of the lane. A south party, dedicated to climbing and stomping nodules on the south side of the lane. And a Chak Rush party, who is dedicated to stomping the mushrooms in the more central areas, and also dedicated solely to killing the Chak Rush.

Yes, that’s right. You see, the other lanes are lucky, in that their Chak Squadron marches right past the main event. But in Nuhoch lane, they’ll run far below the event, meaning that it takes a lethal amount of time to run down there and stop them. So, you need a party preassigned who’s job is, when the Rush starts, to go down there and kill the Rushers, then run back up to start stomping mushrooms. Everyone else must understand that their job is not to attack the Chak Rush, as if they do we all fail.

Did I mention that you need to spread out? Because whether you spread out or not means success or failure. SPREAD OUT!!! This is the hardest part that pugs can’t seem to grasp. You don’t want to have people chasing nodules and recolating, as travel time eats at the clock. You want to have as many people in as many different places as possible.

For this lane, you will want at least 16-20 of your most competent people, with 3-4 dedicated to killing the Chak Rush. For the Chak Rush group, you’ll want good control and high AoE damage. North and South squad should have an equal amount of people. You do not want many extra people in the lane, as stomping nodules is already really hard.

Now, before it happens, I will say that there is an alternate set up. I am saying this, mostly because people will kitten endlessly if I do not: A certain guild-that-should-not-be-named insists on using 24 for Nuhoch squad, and having people double up to ensure that nodule stompers stay alive. Now, while this does work, it is not necessary, so long as your current stompers are competent enough to not die, and even with extras there’s still a chance they’ll both faceplant under a single shroom’s self destruct. With that said, 24 is the absolute max that should be allowed in this lane, as any more scaling will result in the emerge event literally being impossible.

In summation: north squad, south squad, chak rush squad, bouncing mushrooms, SPREAD OUT!!!, leave gerent 30 seconds before he burrows, stomp nodules, avoid mushroom self destruct, bring stability. It is also really important to stand down-lane of the Gerent, as if he charges in the wrong direction, at eats up more precious seconds.

And that, as they say, is that. The end. Fin. That is my guide to beating the King of the Jungle. If you are satisfied with your product, great! If you are not satisfied with your product, then I have some bad news for you: you are not well. Please get in touch with a local therapist immediately.

Hello all! Are you tired of having the Chak Gerent destroy your cannon? Silly thing, doesn’t he know not to break other people’s toys? Are you also tired of there being sparse information, and “guides” that barely say anything? Never fear, for I am here! And, my dear, with my guide to TD meta event, you too can conquer the king of the jungle. All for the low price of $9.99! Yes, for a mere 10 bucks, you can get a fighting chance to conquer the king! So… don’t read further until you’ve sent me the cash.

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…

No peeking!

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Alright, at this point, I’m assuming you’ve sent me the money. So, now I will begin the guide:

Section 1: Begging for money plz I am poor
Section 2: Where and When
Section 3: General information
a)What you will need
b)General event information
c)The Chak Gerent, and how not to be eaten by giant bugs
Section 4: Lane specific information
a)Ogre
b)Rata Novus
c)SCAR
d)Nuhoch

SECTION 2
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The King of the Jungle is the name of the primary meta event for the Tangled Depths. It takes place over the entire map, but the center of this event is the Ley-Line Confluence Waypoint. The event is on a roughly two hour timer, that begins half of an hour after server reset time, and an hour from Dragon Stand Reset time.

At that time, after the event has inevitably failed (because you have not read my guide yet), the entire map will go into reset mode. Then, each lane’s specific events will reset. What you will want to do is… these events! There is plenty of time to do them, and they all unlock useful and important goodies for each of these respective lanes.

The Rata Novus and SCAR Camp waypoints will be looked at the start. You’ll have to go to Ley-Line confluence waypoint, then stroll on over to these places to do their events. Each event is fairly simple, and you need very little explanation beyond what it says on the right hand of the screen. These events are also good for practice, as they’ll have you do things that you will need to do during King of the Jungle.

Once the main chain of events is complete, there are a series of additional non-necessary events that will loop continuously until the main event begins. You can check at a glance how far along all the events are by scrolling over your map, and seeing what “tier” you are on. A tier 4 map has all of the events completed.

The events are frequently done in an hour, so a super-organized map will start gathering an hour before the event begins. A not as organized map will start organizing half an hour before the event begins. An unorganized map flails and screams and they get eaten by giant bugs.

There is a special note here about a special event: The Chak Crown. This is a boss who will spawn south of Ley-Line Confluence. He’s a pain to fight, but most importantly he will contest the waypoint, making organization difficult. I’m going to go over this event specifically. The Crown will spawn a gigantic pool of acid around himself, and throw balls that a high damaging AoE lightning field around himself. To get to the crown, you need to kill the 3 veteran chak that spawn inside the acid. Once down, the acid will vanish, and the crown will begin to stomp in place, sounding out shockwaves alongside of his regular attack. A zerg of chak will spawn around him as well. You can DPS him in this phase, but it is important that you break his breakbar when it appears, otherwise he’ll fill the whole area with acid and wipe the zerg again.

SECTION 3
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WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

#1: $9.99 to give to me to buy this guide.
#2: Have purchased Heart of Thorns
#3: Ley-Line Confluence Waypoint
#4: Bouncing Mushroom and Gliding Masteries
#5: Full Exotic Tiered Gear.
#6: Organization. You can’t just run into this event swinging your sword wildly, hoping that if you try hard enough you’ll get it. What you’ll “get” is eaten by bugs.
#7: Damage oriented food and utility consumable. it doesn’t have to be top tier, but the difference between food and no food is immense.

WHAT I SUGGEST YOU REALLY SHOULD HAVE:

#8: Nuhoch Lore Tier 3. Not much point if you can’t buy stuff with the map currency.
#9: Damage Oriented Gear. This event is a DPS race, after all.
#10: All waypoints on the map
#11: At least 4 commanders, one for each lane.

GENERAL INFORMATION:

At about 20 minutes after the hour, a countdown will start. 25 minutes after the hour, 4 NPCs will run to the end of each lane. At 30 minutes, it is showtime. The technical “goal” of this event is to charge the cannon with ley-line energy to blast your way into Dragonstand.

The real goal of this event is to defeat the Chak Gerent. At the end of each lane the Chak Gerent will spawn. But… he doesn’t care about you. He cares about the cannon, because the Chak Gerent eats ley-line energy, so the cannon is a big ole’ metal Piñata. So the little party stealer will stay buried.

Your goal, first and foremost, is to get the Chak Gerent to emerge. Each lane has a specific mechanic that needs to be accomplished to do this. The better each lane does the mechanic, the weaker the Gerent will be when he emerges.

Each lane gets three locations where they must get the Chak Gerent to emerge. Three times that they must complete their lane specific mechanic. The Chak Gerent maintains constant HP, so the damage you do to him on the first emerge will be there on the second, and so on. This is important: if any one lane fails to get the gerent to emerge at any point in time, the whole event fails. This is what makes King of the Jungle so hard. There’s no room for error for the king.

After about 3 minutes of being emerged, the Chak Gerent will re-burrow himself, because he thinks you are beneath the king, and wants to insult you with how low he thinks you are. He will then fart, making the air in the previous area toxic, dealing a constant AoE damage to anyone standing there. Gerent will move further down the lane, and then you repeat the emerge-DPS cycle all over again.

The thing is, the king isn’t the only guy who wants that delicious gooey goodness that the cannons are collecting. On regular intervals, a squadron of regular chak will spawn up-lane, and start marching toward the cannon with surprising speed. These chak will have a big orange X on their head. These chak will not attack you, but they run surprisingly fast. These guys must be killed, because they will try and destroy the cannon. Each lane has a different tactic for taking them out, which I will go over later.

While Gerent is buried, he can attack you still. Gerent will kind of wander aimlessly in the event area, as it is hard to see while underground. If he passes under you or you stand on top if him, as indicated by the “event champ” symbol that indicates where he is, he will cause a tremor attack to sprout up and hit you. This attack isn’t lethal, but it hits very hard, and can kill in 2 or 3 hits. So, while doing the events, avoid the tunneling Gerent.

If you see someone downed, only rez them if it is safe. If you are defeated, if you are on the first two emerge events, the fastest way to get back to your lane is to use the nearest lane-specific waypoint, and take a Nuhoch Wallow back to the lane. If you are on the third emerge event, the fastest way to get back is to run from Ley-Line Confluence waypoint. If you are defeated, do not lie around. You have to run back, because your carcass is going to keep the event scaled up.

If each lane managed to kill the Gerent and protect the cannon, the event will be completed when the timer counts down. The cannons will charge, blow open a wall, and inside there will be several crystal caches, a strongbox, and a Nuhoch vendor. There will also be a black pedestal with a golden statue on top that will spawn next to Ley-Line Confluence waypoint. You can loot this statue’s south side for goodies. The map will be classified as tier 5, you will get a legendary reward chest full of all sorts of l00t, and you get to brag that you have dethroned the King. So much so that eventually, the $9.99 you paid for this guide will make itself back in rewards.

But until then, stay in your lane if your Gerent is dead. Unfortunate and sudden scaling will lead to death, so be patient, have faith in your teammates, and recommend your teammates this guide for the low price of $9.99

THE CHAK GERENT HIMSELF, OR HOW NOT TO BE EATEN BY GIANT BUGS

If you want to beat the Chak Gerent, you’ve got to know the Chak Gerent. Thankfully, as a boss he is fairly simple. I will go over each of his attacks, and what to do when facing each of these attacks.

#1: The Headlong rush. In this attack, the chak will chitter, rear back, and then make a mad dash at a hereto unknown player. This dash is very far reaching, and it can hit multiple times in stride. This attack knocks back, and is very capable of downing you whomever you are. There are two things to note about this attack: To avoid it, dodge sideways or through it. Or block it. Secondly, never stand up-lane of the chak gerent when he does not have a break bar. That is, never stand in a position such that, if Gerent were to charge you, he would head away from Ley-Line Confluence. This is important, as increased run time between events will make them much more difficult.

#2: The swipe. This attack actually isn’t too bad. He will take a fairly well telegraphed swipe, which will hit in a wide arc directly in front of him, knocking people back. This attack only hits for about 6k on light armor (no toughness), so if you are healthy you can take a few swipes. To avoid it, block, dodge, run through, dodge back, run away, or just take the punch and heal.

#3: Acid Spit. Yes, that annoying thing that all chak can do, the Gerent can do as well. He will spot a generic sized pool of acid on the floor, which does high damage so do not stand inside of it.

#4: Purple Death Donuts. Or.. more of an indigo color really. The Gerent will, without tell, drop a big glowing purple ring on the ground. This ring does massive damage, ticking for 7k per second. This ring will also slowly expand, getting to become quite huge. This purple donut will persist for what seems like forever, and it is responsible for a large number of deaths. Gerent can drop multiples of these, but usually it is one per bar breaking.

#5: Sidestep. The Chak Gerent knows how to dodge, and he will use it. He will spin around an axis, completely displacing his body from where it was previously. This technique does no damage, however it is important to note, as he will very frequently walk out of AoEs.

#6: The Avalanche. AKA the Break Bar attack. For this attack, chak Gerent will get a break bar, then he will twerk so hard that it causes the roof to fall down. The Gerent will rhythmically slam his tail on the ground, causing rocks to fall everywhere. These rocks are indicated by bright orange circles, and have a decent enough delay to step out of. The act of his butt slamming the ground also causes damage if you stand where it hits. This attack will persist easily for a full minute if not broken. So… don’t stand in the AoEs.

Now, as for the strategy for defeating Gerent, it is simple. Do not break his bar. When Gerent is dropping it like it is hot, he is stationary, and will not drop any purple death donuts. The rocks are fairly easy to avoid with minimal practice, so during this break bar attack he is extremely easy to DPS. Breaking the bar will only earn about 2 seconds of respite before Gerent starts attacking again, so there is no benefit to doing so. To avoid breaking his bar, avoid using attacks that cause any of the following:

Chill
Cripple
Immobilize
Slow
Blind
Taunt
Fear
Weakness
Daze
Stun
Blowout
Knockdown
Knockback
Pull

This will affect classes differently. Some classes will have an easy time. Some classes will have a hard time, as they will inflict conditions passively. It isn’t super-duper important to avoid all of these conditions, but you shouldn’t use hard CC ever, and keep soft CC to a minimum. I.E. don’t spam skills all willy nilly.

When Gerent is stomping, feel free to melee and range DPS him as hard as you can. He is quite large, so multi-hitting area attacks will do a lot of damage. But when Gerent is not stomping, he will be quite a bit tougher. You can still melee him, however be warned that Gerent loves to stand in his own purple donuts, making meleeing impossible. Have a good ranged DPS weapon on you at all times. There is no particular kind of DPS preferred, so direct and condi are fine.

A good benchmark is to see if you have at least 1/3rd of his health bar down by the end of the first fight. If so, you’re good to go. If not, then you’ve got to squeeze some extra DPS fast.

A minor note: the camera will adjust the FoV during the first event, but many times during the second and third events, the FoV will not adjust. So, either be ready to fight the Gerent with a zoomed up camera, or have your FoV slider adjusted to max before the fight begins.

Don’t mistake someone being disgruntled for there being a legitimate complaint.

Tigaseye.2047:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

With peak performance only being about 10% difference between exotic and ascended, most players are already mechanically “best off”.

It is probably worth noting, here, that “real” raiders, in WoW, most of whom min/max obsessively, would laugh at the idea of 10% being considered very little difference.

I’m not really sure why people have decided 10% doesn’t matter, here?

In one way it’s good, I suppose, as it should be about talent, not gear…

…but, quite frankly, it also reeks heavily of people being falsely and continuously reassured, in an attempt to keep the maximum number of players happy.

Or not so unhappy.

I never said it was “very little difference”. I don’t care what “real” raiders in WoW think, since what a “real” raider is defined as is an arbitrary set that exists solely to justify your claims. This isn’t WoW. I never said 10% didn’t matter, either. Don’t put words in my mouth.

Personally I think of Runescape as a frame of reference. In Runescape, every successive tier of equipment is 10%-20% stronger than the last, and an order of magnitude more expensive. First you spend a few thousand, then you spend a few million, then you spend tens of millions, then you spend hundreds of millions. It gets out of hand quite quickly, and a lower tier has little to no chance against anything not immediately in succession. It would be like if after ascended were legendary (10% over ascended), and then after legendary there was epic (10% over legendary), and epic cost 30k gold per piece.

GW2 is not as bad. Yes, the difference between exotic and ascended is nearly an order of magnitude in cost, but a good portion of it is superfluous. The trinkets are bought with a daily reward currency distributed equally among all players, or with other currencies earned independent of gold. The armor contributes the most minuscule of differences, of so the only thing you need to "buy’ are the weapons. And the weapons themselves are a 6% difference.

The reason why 10% is on the threshold of “not too bad” is because it is within the margins of the random number generator. Weapon attack strength varies by a total of 10% per skill use, so even with an ascended weapon there is no guarantee that in any particular fight your opponent won’t luck out and either do high damage, or you do low damage. It is only after a long series of trials that the obvious pattern emerges. Likewise, this is only true for direct damage. The total advantage granted by ascended for condition damage is much smaller (weapon attack strength doesn’t matter, so around 5%). There is a large overlap in performance between these two sets, so much that there is kitten chance that exotic will be in the performance range of ascended.

Tarn.1374:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Please no more of this “leeching traders” crap again. It has already been discussed at length that free trade isn’t evil. It goes through the same song and dance over and over again.

You’re not eliminating free trade. It is a good thing, not a bad thing.

It’s a game, not the real world. The less materialistic and economic-based an MMO is the better it is.

There is nothing wrong with an MMO having a thriving economy, and making the game less based on the economy would not be an improvement.

savacli.8172:

Pandabro.8743:

OP is absolutely correct. Having spent hours on 2/3 bosses they are not that mind bogglingly hard that casual players cannot complete them.

BUT there is a perception that Ascended, or at least 2/3 ascended is required. It’s not a completely unjustified perception either as the 2nd boss is a pretty hard DPS check and having certain Ascended gear will really really help you. Sure it can probably be done with everyone in full exotics but the level of play needed to do that is pretty high and not many can execute on that level so people putting groups together are safer in making the requirement that Ascended gear is required.

The problem with this is that Ascended costs SO kitten MUCH. It’s a huge barrier to entry for new players. It takes months for a new player to get to the level they need to be to even start raids.

This is the biggest problem with raids right now. Difficulty is fine, but so many are being locked out of content simply because of the huge gold sink Ascended is right now.

This spreadsheet breaks down Ascended vs Exotic for those curious about the exact advantage with Power builds.

In other words walking in with Ascended trinkets is about 4% damage increase.
Bringing in an Ascended weapon is another 6% ish.
Armor and all infusions slotted is about another 2% each in damage increase.

So those who have the time and resources for Ascended gear can easily walk in with a boosted 10% in damage over the exotic player. That’s not to say it’s impossible for an exotic team to clear the Raid bosses, but that’s an additional 10% in damage that the exotic team would have to come up with when compared to a similarly skilled team that is in ascended gear.

So a casual player not only needs to get through the initial learning curve, but they may also have a harder time clearing the boss depending on the team’s overall gear quality.

I would say that the 10% bonus from ascended weapons and trinkets is just the first step.

The thing about an organized run, or a run with players familiar with dungeon content is that there are a lot of things that get taken for granted. I would pug run dungeons a lot, and there are several things that just don’t happen as when compared to an organized run. It is interesting to see two all zerker groups engage a boss, and one down the boss twice as fast as the other.

#1: Everyone is not in the optimal gear prefix for their role. During these runs you’ll get plenty of Knights, Soldiers, Cavalier, and condi sets on classes that don’t do good condis. This can cut the teams DPS down 1/3rd of what it would be, but for now lets just consider it 1/6th.

#2: Players are not running the optimum builds. The build can have even more of an influence on DPS than the gear prefix, since builds decide how many buffs you give out, whether they are redundant or not. The difference between a solo build focused on self buffing and a “team build” built around having other dedicated buffers can be huge, so this can easily equate to a 10% DPS drop. Though theoretically it can be much higher.

#3: Players are not running optimum classes. The DPS difference between classes can easily be 20% or higher, but lets just consider that as 10%

#4: Players are not running the optimum sigils and runes. I’m not even sure what these are anymore myself, so I can’t give an exact value. But, lets put it at 5% damage, as many runes give bonuses similar to that.

#5: Players are not running the optimum damage rotations. Again, you’ll be stuck with players who try to range the boss down instead of meleeing, or using the wrong weapons, or spamming the wrong skills at the wrong time. You can consider this a 20% reduction in damage at minimum.

So to keep track, that is 1 × 0.833_ x 0.9 × 0.9 × 0.95 x 0.8 = 0.462 This means that , you’ll end up with a group that does less than half the damage of an organized group. And this is a conservative estimate of the reduction. This all, however, leads to one of the bigger problems:

#6: There’s no feedback on what you’ve done wrong regarding maximizing DPS. Even the notion of DPS is foreign to many players, let alone how to maximize it. You just gotta try again and hope it works. And again. And again… and again… you can come up for an infinite number of excuses that excuse you from being the weak link in the chain.

When I hear something like this:

Misguided.5139:

Great post. The group I am with have spent a total of 9-10 hours on Vale Guardian so far over three nights. You could call us hardcore casuals. The second night we made it to the enrage timer for the first time. The third night we did a much better job getting through the early phases of the fight more regularly and got the boss to 15-20% on our best effort. Really hoping we can get him down this week.

It is a greater discouragement than any “oh, you’ll get it” words you can speak. This here speaks volumes about how unattainable the event really is. You have to hope that your group is going to miraculously self improve somehow, or you can throw your week away.

You guys have a very strange definition of “casual”. The “casual” player doesn’t even comprehend the notion of “DPS”. Damage extends as far as how big a number they can get. The “casual” player does not take initiative: when you give out instructions, they assume someone else will handle it. The “casual” player is used to attending events with masses of other players who will save them, and thus don’t need anything more than the most general of instructions. The “casual” does not have the drive to get together with a group of people to spend a part time job’s worth of time on an event with no end in sight. And no, saying that your random group can do it is not proof of raids being open to casuals. What would be proof is beating the Vale Guardian with 5 minutes left on the clock, or a successful kill with random classes all in knight gear (sans required condi builds).

I do not demand any changes. I only ask that you guys admit that your view is skewed and that raids are not casual friendly. “You” being general here, not necessarily referring to Savacli.

I find this whole discussion to be on questionable terms in the first place. Sure, in a real world economy it is easy to see disparities in wealth, although I wouldn’t argue they are a problem unless the disparity of wealth directly causes someone to be without necessities. You can see the nice car, the better clothes, the hotter wife, the better food, and these all have an impact on personal satisfaction and all that.

But tell me, what is the impact of the divide of wealth in this game? I can see 20 players standing by the bank, all with various random skins and dyes. Which one is the Gatsby of us? Whom am I to be envious of? Is it the guy with a sword so glowy that he can’t see his enemies anymore? Is it the girl who got a precursor… but didn’t say word about selling it so I don’t even know if she did or not? I have 50 gold right now, but if I had 5000 gold instead, would players go around being jealous of my otherwise utterly invisible digital currency?

The “best off” in GW2 consists almost solely of cosmetics, titles, and the flimsiest of standards. The wealth is superfluous, and the skins are for personal use only This isn’t like other games, where mechanical performance is heavily tied to wealth. The only arguable gap is the 300-600 gold between having ascended weapons or not, and that isn’t too large of a difference. While Wanze probably has exponentially more money than I have ever made, if you put us into a PVP match you wouldn’t be able to tell us apart. Put us in Cursed Shore, and good luck picking either of us out of a crowd.

With peak performance only being about 10% difference between exotic and ascended, most players are already mechanically “best off”.

Kerin.9125:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Please no more of this “leeching traders” crap again. It has already been discussed at length that free trade isn’t evil. It goes through the same song and dance over and over again.

You’re not eliminating free trade. It is a good thing, not a bad thing.

It’s open to debate whether ‘free trade’ is a good thing or not, that’s not the issue, the issue is the leechers are typical middle-men, they add no value but simply leech cash out of others’ work.

You may like the idea, you may even do it, I loathe it, I loathe middle-men!

Its really not open to debate. There’s no evidence for restricting re-trade being beneficial. There’s plenty of evidence that the current system for re-trade is beneficial. Middle men aren’t leeching anything. Hell, given the variability of the market, half the time they give you money. If not by being wrong about the direction of market turns, by being wrong about the degree of the market turn. I have yet to hear a single case that isn’t based in utter naivete or wrought with jealousy for the restricting of trading base goods.

Please no more of this “leeching traders” crap again. It has already been discussed at length that free trade isn’t evil. It goes through the same song and dance over and over again.

You’re not eliminating free trade. It is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Right now, I’m having a hard time figuring out how people aren’t making money.

A)Do Verdant Brink. Flax is good cash, the crowbars have good loot, you can trade the airship parts for loot bags, there’s champions everywhere and enough mobs to get good loot.

B)Do Auric Basin. There’s ancient/ori nodes everywhere, the events are easy to follow, and a well participated map gives you enough Aurilium to buy 27 keys, which is how much you need for the easiest meta in all 4 map lists.

C)Do Tangled Depths. This one is hard, so currently you may need a guild, but once you get crystals, Chak Acid brings bank. The crystal caches are everywhere, and you can loot a ton of them. There’s also a big flax farm here, too. A successful meta event can fill your inventory twice over plus some change, and you can get some cool zerg themed weapons out of it, too. The important thing is that with the specific ascended mats you get out of those crystal caches, you can craft ley-line infused tools, which sell for twice as much as it costs to make them.

D)Do all of the maps. Get the ascended materials, and craft Fulgurite Crystals. 25 Crystals can get you Jeweled Damask Patches, and 50 fulgurite crystals can get you a Jeweled Deldrimoor Steel Plated Dowel. Both are worth about twice what it costs to buy the raw materials, but you need to do the metas on all 3 maps. At the time of writing this, Jeweel Deldrimoor goes for 120G and Jeweled Damask goes for 50g.

E)Dragon Stand. You still get amazing loot out of this place, even if you don’t buy all of the machetes with the other map currencies. Just appear at reset time (30 minutes past every odd hour, might be different in your area), and have a blast. The events are fairly simple and usually succeed.

F)Silverwastes. Still worth a lot of cash.

G)Drytop. Coarse Sand is valuable, and Drytop rains the stuff.

H)There’s always basic gathering. Wood and Ores are quite valuable right now. If you’ve got a watchwork pick, even more so. This method is low maintenance, so you can watch TV while you do it.

I)I’m pretty sure event trains are still run in Cursed Shore and EotM. With the new map rewards, you can get a bit more cash than you’re used to. Even Karka Shell farming is better with these map rewards.

J)Dungeon rewards were lessened. Not removed. You can still run dungeons. Just grab your glass cannon gear and go for it. Most of the places have been power creeped anyway. The important thing is to spend your tokens wisely, buying the right gear to salvage for insignias, inscriptions, and ectoplasm.

Actually, that whole “max DPS” thing is advice that can go for anywhere. The faster something is dead, the faster you get loot and move on.

K) TP flipping is a thing. Just saying. As it happens, due to the high demand of Deldrimor and Spiritwood, it is currently a profit to buy their materials, craft them, then sell them. You can put this in with other dailies such as flax farming and quartz farming.

My question is, what are you doing that isn’t making cash? If you’re anywhere near level 80 content you should be making bank. If your complaint is that “everything that I want to do doesn’t make money”, then that is a wholly different problem than “I can’t make money”. You can. Very easily.

Personally I love the mobs there. Most of them are damage stacked, so they’re fairly quick to kill but still dangerous.

When TDMS runs the event, a dev regularly does it with us. They are paying attention (particularly to Nuhoch lane).

Though I’m not sure the event needs that much of a change. The hardest part is the fact that it is an open world event and you’ve got to deal with pugs. I’ve written at length about that subject. But aside from that… once you get everyone there, I’m not sure exactly how much organization you need.

For Ogre and Rata Novus, you just need the numbers. For SCAR, you need decent ranged DPS when things go sour and Gerent decides to camp in his own AoEs. Nuhoch is the complicated one, but so long as that lane is reserved for competent players, I think a pug map could eventually do it.

Eventually. Now, just enjoy their tears. I am working on a comprehensive guide on how to do the event, and I imagine once I get that out it will help. I still need to run Novus lane, though…

Harry the Hobo.3407:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Maybe if you’re running a hybrid/condi build. As a fellow power reaper player, my advice to other power reapers is to stick with power. Even with no duration I already cap out vuln and have a high AoE chill uptime. If you wanted more chill, I’d just suggest Runes of the Ice. You lose the power/ferocity from scholar runes, but gain chill duration and a 7% damage mod against chilled foes, which is much more reliable than the scholar bonus.

---

I’ve been doing a bit of math, and Marauder might be a worthy investment for players who don’t want to go full glass.

It comes down to sheer bulk. While Marauder is basically a Berserker + Valkyrie mix, Marauder has more points. 3,362 total stats as compared to 3,087 of the previous 3 tiered sets (not including runes). This means that, while you could trade off to more durability by mixing Valkyrie and Berserker, it will be less efficient and less powerful then mixing Berserker and Marauder.

With Scholar Runes and no additional buffs, A full Marauder set has 3,497 effective power while a full Berserker set has 3,819 effective power. A difference of 9%. Most min/maxers will pull their hair out over that number, but for low HP classes that extra 579 Vitality is important. For low HP classes it is a 49.7% increase in effective HP. For mid HP classes, 36.4% increase. For high tier, 30% increase.

It isn’t optimal in a perfect comp, perfect play setting. But, 9% lower damage vs. 49.7% greater effective HP is a tradeoff that I won’t blame anyone for taking.

In max might + max fury situations, I’m getting effective polwers of 5,226 and 5,721, or an 8.6% increase by using Berserker over Marauder.

My advise would be to disregard the statement saying if you are a reaper, stick with power reaper.

You’ve already gotten it wrong. The guy was talking about using Viper’s sets to get extra chill/vuln duration for a power build. My advice to power builds is to stay a power build and don’t run viper for extra vuln/chill duration. Pay attention now.