Guild Wars 2

It helps if you’ve got the right builds and gear. In my experience, 90% of the fight is decided before the fight even begins.

For PVE, you need to get a good build, and get good gear (I.E. Berserker, Assassin, Marauder, Sinister, Viper. Anything very high damage). Spec for as much damage as possible and as much boon support as possible. Make rigorous use of the dodge key. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be surprised how easy the game can get.

Jia Shen.4217:

Now for the other issue. You DO NOT have to have ascended everything gear to be successful at this raid. You do however need everything exotic. So this isn’t for the very casual player who doesn’t even bother to gear with something other than random junk that they picked up in loot. Right now my guild has gotten the boss down to 40% health and we only have ascended weapons and about half with ascended trinkets. That extra 1-2% in stats isn’t going to cover for anything here.

See. that’s where you’re wrong. having full ascended weapons and trinkets means you’re doing 10% more damage than exotics. That’s equivalent to 43 additional seconds on the clock. That’s a pretty big chunk right there from gear tiers alone.
Ascended armor itself isn’t necessary, but the trinkets and weapons are.

The type of gear you wear is a big factor, too. The difference between damage of something like Knight and Berserker is around 50%, which is 146 seconds on the clock. Add that on to the previous, and being inefficiently geared at the exotic level would be equivalent to doing the fight efficiently geared, but with a 4.8 minute enrage timer. Don’t forget, this is also with specific builds and classes.

What you’re doing here doesn’t make sense. You’re saying that you don’t need to be optimally built to succeed at raids, but the only thing you’ve brought is evidence against your very own claim. “You don’t need to be optimally built! I mean, we don’t do it, and we can barely get the first boss past half HP…”. You can’t wait to do it either, because in months when everyone else has it down pat nobody will put up with newbs anymore.

Tapioca.9062:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

#4: Less than stellar community. The dungeon community is the source of a lot of hostility in the PVE game. Arguably most of it. Working on the dungeons is empowering the more destructive sides of the community. The way dungeons are being run now is not how they were designed to be, and there is a resentment between players and devs there.

If this were the case, what do you think the rationale behind adding raids was? The raiding community is more toxic than the dungeon community ever was and I’ll happily admit that segments of the dungeon community were plenty toxic. While I agree with most of your other points, I don’t think this one is credible. There are plenty of reasons why Anet is trying to socially engineer players out of Dungeons but I don’t think dislike for the community is one of them.

Look carefully at how raids are designed. They avoid many of the mistakes that dungeons made. They’re all gigantic basic arenas that focus almost exclusively on bosses. Nothing to snag enemies on, harder to exploit, nothing to skip. Can only be done once a week to prevent farming. Solid gates that prevent you from progressing.

Likewise, raids were added so Anet could say GW2 has raids. It is one of those expectations that the world put on MMOs that has been plaguing Anet for years. They’ve been beating around the bush for years as well, trying to come up with ways to add raid-like content while still being different and open to other players, such as updating Tequatl and making Triple Trouble. It just wasn’t satisfactory for players. After so long with having players turn away because they think MMO = Raids, Anet finally caved on their ideals and said “Fine, we’ll give you raids”.

Goldrock.9076:

way too early to be making loong winded posts on raid content because well its a new thing and chances are it will change over time.Like everything else though i agree but patience.

Um, no. It is never to soon to make a comment on how something is done. Complacency just leads to more problems. If you see an issue, there’s no proof that there’s a solution in the mix or that things won’t get worse, so speak up and say stuff immediately.

Never. It was taken away to make the people who did buy it feel extra special, and to pressure other people into buying stuff for fear of never seeing it again.

I’m not planning to participate in any raids anytime soon. For a multitude of reasons, which I will now list in no specific order:

#1: I am the most uncoordinated individual I have ever met. It takes me hours to do jumping puzzles, let alone when I have 9 angry players waiting for me to get it right. Most of my play in this game consists of pre-planning and theorycrafting, and very little consists of clutch plays and precise movements. My aptitude for anything “skill” related is incredibly low, so much so that my actual skill caps out a week within playing the game. I can’t “get gud” basically.

#2: I don’t have anyone to do it with. Nobody in my area plays GW2, and I’m a lone wolf by trade. Any PUG groups I manage to get in on will be filled full of antisocial neckbeards desperate to prove something who will rage when yet another thing in their life doesn’t go exactly right. Without a group that will understand that I’ll ruin half the attempts because my fingers up and decided to not respond to my brain, running a raid is just going to be a frustrating experience that benefits nobody.

#3: I don’t have time to do it. I keep odd hours IRL, and now that I’m going to college a surprisingly large amount of time is dedicated to that fact. The first week of raids was an exam week, so now that everybody wants “experienced”, I’ll never get in to a group.

#4:It goes against what I’ve been striving for in this game, which is gear equality and class equality. The whole point of making the game harder in specific ways was to make it so more gearsets other than full glass cannon were desirable. But, by putting an enrage timer into mix, the only gearsets that get encouraged are berserker, berserker with a piece or two of knight gear to draw aggro , and a healing set. Whereas Anet originally saw the superiority of GC gear as a problem, now they see it as a good thing. And as with classes, instead of making content that encourages a diverse set of play, we have content that is optimized around having particular groups to maximize buffs and performance, leaving classes who don’t fit that mold (I.E. thief) to be left in the dust.

#5: The ascended requirements. Back when Anet said Ascended wouldn’t be required for anything, I took their word for it, and then continued to not make ascended gear, instead spending my cash on other things like alternate armor sets and outfits. Now suddenly I’m supposed to have full ascended gear, and to get the weapons alone for my characters it is going to cost several thousand gold, let alone how long it’ll take to get the laurels for the ascended trinkets, rings, and amulets. I am simply not rich enough to take my characters into the raids.

So in short, I can never have the “skill”, I don’t have the time, the people, or the money, and I have ethical problems with how raids are made. To be frank, if the raiding community is anything like the dungeon community of old, then they’re an insufferable bunch who will make the whole thing unwelcoming to everybody but themselves; exactly how they like it.

It has never been “confirmed”. That is just something players spout when they don’t feel like they’re getting enough attention.

That said, dungeons aren’t getting as much immediate attention as other areas in the game. For several reasons:

#1: Low returns. There were times when certain dungeons were redone (Ascalon Catacombs, Twilight Arbor), and these revisions received mixed reviews and little to no response out of the playerbase. Nearly every expansion done to dungeons has turned out to be a flop.
#2: High work load. Reworking dungeons actually takes quite the time, especially for such low returns. Anet would rather work on new content than revise the old. Revising the old can be quite difficult because
#3: Highly exploitable. All of the dungeons were designed by aesthetics first, and function later This has lead to every dungeon having countless places to snag enemies, glitch bosses, skip content, etc. Because of this, going back into each dungeon and fixing every little problem has been an unending problem.
#4: Less than stellar community. The dungeon community is the source of a lot of hostility in the PVE game. Arguably most of it. Working on the dungeons is empowering the more destructive sides of the community. The way dungeons are being run now is not how they were designed to be, and there is a resentment between players and devs there.

As far as fractals go, there’s never been any official statement as far as I know, but basically yeah the devs will replace old fractals with new ones when they release more.

Liewec.2896:

if they ever do release bikinis i really pray its an armour skin option!
mix it with heavy armour, sexeh!

Only if you don’t mind having to buy it 3 times for each armor set.

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

ZoSo.4867:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

7) They’ll run around in full knight gear with all defensive specializations because “HoT is hard”.

Wait a sec, what is so bad about using knight gear?

Probably that it’s not Berserker or Assassin, because apparently, that’s the only way to play the game, didn’t you know?

I use Knight’s on my Ele, actually. HoT isn’t hard, but Ele is way too squishy for me to be comfortable in Berserker gear with it.

It is worse than that. The problem with knight gear is that it scales everything in the worst way possible. It goes off of toughness, which is the most inefficient defensive stat, and has power/precision as its secondary stats but the precision barely makes up for the loss of power being a primary stat. Overall it ends up as having the same offensive power as Soldiers, but a fraction of the effective HP, and no defense against condis. I maintain that Knight is one of the worst gearsets in the game. You’re almost always better off with anything else.

The implication here isn’t necessarily the gear set. It is the mindset that active defenses and counter-burst don’t exist. When I watch pugs play in this game, they violently wiggle in place while auto attacking, ultimately doing almost no damage while avoiding no damage. I always wonder what it is the randoms think when, while fighting an enemy for 10 seconds, they see someone else come along and slaughter an adjacent enemy in two attacks. But alas, these post NPE players are used to a game where you can walk around naked auto attacking things and win. HoT comes around, and suddenly everything is terrible. This frightened mindset is what prevents a lot of players from performing well: they’re spending their time so frightened of big, scary attacks from mordrem they don’t realize you can literally walk out of the way and take very little damage.

The Chak Gerent meta has two features about it: #1 is that it is a DPS race, and a relatively tight one at that. #2 is that many of the Gerents attacks hit so hard that it’ll plow right through 1k extra toughness anyway. The end result being you cut offensive power to invest in stats that see no returns in play. Because of this, you’ll almost always want to go high damage in the event.

If you want more durability, I’d first suggest changing traits and utilities around. Gear is expensive, but changing traits/utilities is free. But if that isn’t enough, I’d suggest Marauder gear. On low HP classes it gives 50% more durability but sacrifices only 8% power. Unlike knights gear, which sacrifices 31% power for 67% greater durability. If you can’t afford Marauder, then hybridized gear of GC with… well, anything but knight works pretty well, too. Or if you want to go the condi route, Trailblazer is surprisingly tanky for how much long-term damage it can do.

You speak as if everyone in Knight’s gear tries to facetank bosses and kitten. That’;s not the case. I’m actively avoiding attacks all the time. Knight’s gear gives me some leeway in case I kitten up, because let’s face it, people are going to mess up. I play zerk/assassin/sinister or rampager on all my other classes. But I’m uncomfortable as a zerker Ele, because it feels too fragile to me. So I picked up knight’s. Skill, not gear, is the deciding factor. Being dead severely lowers one’s DPS.

But kudos to you for making suggestions, politely, instead of throwing a temper tantrum fit for a queen.

Don’t think of it as an individual. Think of it as a group effort: having higher overall DPS buys more leeway for the group as a whole. The more you push your DPS, the more mistakes other members of your team are allowed to make. In a 20 man group, 30% higher DPS on everyone is equivalent to having 6 extra non-scaling players. That is roughly equal to if a quarter of your squad dies and never comes back.

The thing with player skill is that it varies wildly. DPS is a harder limit. Cutting down on damage for a smoother performance takes away from peak. Take away too much, and you’ll end up in situation where you can’t win, instead of being less likely to win. The better you are at the game, the less you need to cut down.

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

ZoSo.4867:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

7) They’ll run around in full knight gear with all defensive specializations because “HoT is hard”.

Wait a sec, what is so bad about using knight gear?

Probably that it’s not Berserker or Assassin, because apparently, that’s the only way to play the game, didn’t you know?

I use Knight’s on my Ele, actually. HoT isn’t hard, but Ele is way too squishy for me to be comfortable in Berserker gear with it.

It is worse than that. The problem with knight gear is that it scales everything in the worst way possible. It goes off of toughness, which is the most inefficient defensive stat, and has power/precision as its secondary stats but the precision barely makes up for the loss of power being a primary stat. Overall it ends up as having the same offensive power as Soldiers, but a fraction of the effective HP, and no defense against condis. I maintain that Knight is one of the worst gearsets in the game. You’re almost always better off with anything else.

The implication here isn’t necessarily the gear set. It is the mindset that active defenses and counter-burst don’t exist. When I watch pugs play in this game, they violently wiggle in place while auto attacking, ultimately doing almost no damage while avoiding no damage. I always wonder what it is the randoms think when, while fighting an enemy for 10 seconds, they see someone else come along and slaughter an adjacent enemy in two attacks. But alas, these post NPE players are used to a game where you can walk around naked auto attacking things and win. HoT comes around, and suddenly everything is terrible. This frightened mindset is what prevents a lot of players from performing well: they’re spending their time so frightened of big, scary attacks from mordrem they don’t realize you can literally walk out of the way and take very little damage.

The Chak Gerent meta has two features about it: #1 is that it is a DPS race, and a relatively tight one at that. #2 is that many of the Gerents attacks hit so hard that it’ll plow right through 1k extra toughness anyway. The end result being you cut offensive power to invest in stats that see no returns in play. Because of this, you’ll almost always want to go high damage in the event.

If you want more durability, I’d first suggest changing traits and utilities around. Gear is expensive, but changing traits/utilities is free. But if that isn’t enough, I’d suggest Marauder gear. On low HP classes it gives 50% more durability but sacrifices only 8% power. Unlike knights gear, which sacrifices 31% power for 67% greater durability. If you can’t afford Marauder, then hybridized gear of GC with… well, anything but knight works pretty well, too. Or if you want to go the condi route, Trailblazer is surprisingly tanky for how much long-term damage it can do.

If anything, I’d recommend it for SCAR lane only. That’s the lane that is most prone to DPS failure. It is because the thumper automatically breaks Gerent’s bar, making the standard tactic no-cc max DPS quite a bit harder.

I had another successful run 3 hours ago. It’s pretty sweet.

Which is a shame, since the day Anet releases these into the gemstore is the day Anet makes a million dollars.

The one MMO was looking forward to (Everquest Next) has been put on life support. It is a shame, though. Buildable and destructible environments looked fun. I mean, I hated that their whole “permanent changes to the world” thing would mean that the game could only break, but it would’ve been interesting.

That said, I’m fine with HoT. I like the maps, I like the enemies, I like the new specializations, I like masteries, I like the gear prefixes, I like the money I make, I like the music, and I like the new skins. Story is “meh” and I don’t plan on raiding anytime soon, and I haven’t done PVP/WvW stuff, but I find more good than bad in the game right now.

I came in here expecting an unreasonable change, but a 5% reduction to max HP wouldn’t be too bad. At least on SCAR lane.

I run chak gerent regularly. Sometimes the lane I command succeeds. Sometimes the event succeeds. But each failure is on the margin: you’d be amazed how frequent it is that it requires one more nodule to emerge the gerent, or how SCAR lane needed 1% more damage. Those are the only two parts that fail.

The words “organized” are nigh meaningless. The only thing they imply is that someone has been trying to taxi others in for awhile. The hardest part about the event is getting everybody on the same page. If you do that,, I’m fairly confident the event will succeed. But boy is that hard. The average pug is insufferable in the strangest of ways:

1)They’ll only taxi in 5 minutes before the event begins then go AFK
2) They’ll refuse to listen to explanations then complain that they don’t know what to do.
3)They’ll fight you on the strategy and purposefully CC the boss because “it makes them vulnerable”.
4)They’ll run around in circles because they aren’t sure what their squad is supposed to do, no matter how much you explain.
5)They’ll join the event in masterwork gear and no masteries.
6)They’ll refuse to join squads, speak up if they have questions, or cooperate.
7) They’ll run around in full knight gear with all defensive specializations because “HoT is hard”.
8)They don’t understand what soft CC is.
9)They don’t have WPs on the map so they’ll just lie there dead.
10) A blast finisher? What’s that?
11) They’ll ignore that there’s a meta going on and try to do hero points on the same map.
12) They’ll complain about explanations and proudly boast in Map Chat that they are turning off Map Chat.
13) They’ll only try the event once and never again, ensuring that there’s a steady stream of completely new people and no experienced players.
14) They don’t have the attention span to start events early to get full rewards, then complain that rewards suck.
15) They’ll refuse to eat food, even if you put a feast right in their face.
16)They’ll join random squads and refuse to spread out.
17)They’ll enter the map expecting to be carried, no matter how many times the event has failed.
18)Dodge? What does that do?

And so on. Its like herding cats. I think the high success of guild runs is because a guild is mostly full of people on the same page. To that end, I’m not sure the event is overtuned as much as it is the community is not competent enough to do it yet.

Typical evening for me:

#1: Log in to my all my alts and do the flax farm, tree farm, quartz farm.
#2: Log into Reaper and do Treasure Mushrooms
#3: Run Triple Trouble with my guild on whatever toon I feel like that day.
#4: See if my other guild is organizing Chak Gerent. If they are, join there and help organize and explain the event.
#5: Continue doing LWS2 achievements before I head to HoT story.
#6: Try out new PVE builds on various toons in different maps.
#7: Get some map completion for my alts.
#8: Hunt out remaining mastery points in Dragon Stand

After 8 I’m usually going to sleep, or am in the “wing it” phase. After doing a lot of the above, I plan to complete the ambrite weapon collection set, gather the mats for ascended weapons on all my toons to finally start doing raids. Maybe after I’m no longer bored of them, I’ll start doing dungeons/fractals/PVP/WvW again.

There’s a couple of ways to change karma into gold.

First but inefficient way: Buy Lost Orian Jewelry Boxes from the Orrian temples in Orr. They give junk items to sell to vendors, and sometimes good items to sell to other players.

Second but long way: by cloth crab grabbing gloves, and put them into the mystic forge to get gloves you can salvage. Salvage them for cotton and linen, then sell on the TP.

Third faster but not as efficient way: buy rare quality weapons from cultural vendors, put them into the mystic forge to get rares/exotics you can trade or salvage. I’d recommend going for weapons that naturally sell higher than ecto prices (such as staves or greatswords), and hope for a legendary. This method can blow through a lot of karma quickly, but it isn’t as reliable as the linen method.

To be fair, a lot of those complaints are similar to what I’ve seen of the company as far as content goes.

When I say that Arenanet is an “ideal driven company”, that is not a compliment. It basically means the head brass have some artsy picture of how they want things to be, and be kitten ed if it is impossible or you don’t agree with it. Think about GW2’s inception: they wanted a game to break the mold, be different from how other games in the genre operated, so much so that the entire GW2 project was considered a gigantic risk. While some changes were good, other changes removed the character of what the game was, and Arenanet quickly had to compromise their manifesto just to deal with the onslaught of complaints they received.

Many of the glassdoor reviews reflect this, if not directly then indirectly. Unreasonable demands, suggestions ignored, everything having to go through one person’s flighty mood for issues they shouldn’t even be in charge of, etc. GW2 isn’t run on sense or reasoning, and because of this you’ll see design decisions that are utterly baffling and benefit no one. There is a lot of stupid complaints about the game. However, many of the legitimate complaints are about things so absurd it would take a profound study in the rationality of humanity to explain how Arenanet came to such a decision.

I quit playing engi because it hurts.

No, really. It isn’t anything wrong with the class. First class I ever played. I’ve vouched since launch that Engis are one of the best classes in the game, if not the best. But it hurts my wrists to play it effectively. Playing an engi is like playing Mozart on the keyboard. After so many days of my hands aching after playing engi, I had to drop the class.

As for why other people don’t play it… I imagine it is because the engineer lacks history. The thing with most classes (warrior, ranger, guardian, elementalist, etc) is that they have ties to historical archetypes in the genre. Paladins, wizards, assassins, druids, etc. But the engineer is a steampunk themed class that doesn’t have as much as history to it. In the fantasy genre, the smart guy is usually a wizard of some kind. The Engi is adopted into the genius role later, where everyone already looks to walking sticks for know-how.

This combines with a second thing: the engi is hard. It is hard to learn, it is hard to play. You can forget about that "max DPS’ rotation in metabuilds, as it basically boils down to “use skills when off cooldown, prioritizing high damage first”. But, you still have to learn how to swiftly switch between kits fast enough to use clutch skills when needed, as well as keep track of multiple cooldowns when going for damage. Its something I say often, and it holds true: The engi takes two button presses where other classes take 1 to do the same action. This requires a familiarity with the class that is much higher.

So, combine no real history and the highest barrier to entry out of any class, and you get a wall that most players aren’t sure they even want to cross. But to anyone considering engi who doesn’t have a history of wrist problems due to past career choices: it is worth it. The Engi is totally worth it. You can take them anywhere, do anything. There is no problem you can’t solve as an Engi.

darianturner.8096:

Don’t know what you want to achieve with that post, Anet doesn’t care about state of the class. Look for Thief forum and ask him the same thing, you will see.

Just play the class if you like it and find a team that brings you to the raid, it’s what I’m gonna do tomorrow with my mates anyway

Funny thing is, you can same the same thing about the ranger, warrior, and guardian forums. Eles feel like they are being actively discriminated against with recent visual changes. So that leaves… mesmer, engi, revs? Yep. Dev’s hate 6/9 classes apparently.

Not sure how good they’ll be in WvW but I found myself surprised at how good shouts were in PVE. “Rise!” in particular can make you nigh unstoppable when fighting enough enemies.

Definitely agree. Although I notice the amount of clutter isn’t just the LFG stuff. It is maps in general. At any time people are forming champ trains, HP trains, pre-event taxis, meta event taxis, or misc trains on… 5 different maps at least. There’s so much stuff that finding anything specific is hard to do.

IMO, the HoT maps should have their own LFGs.

You might want to be more careful with your screenshots, Jeremy Whitehead.

Animism.6849:

Basically – we aren’t.
Anyone who recommends farming champion trains is concerning.
All the current methods in game of making gold are entirely sub-par to what we had before.

Bring back dungeon rewards please…

Actually, by doing a rudimentary flax farm (on my alts), quartz crystal gathering for ley-line tools, treasure mushroms, and also by crafting jeweled damask/deldrimoor, I’m making quite a lot of bank. I’ve bought 6 full Viper Sets, 800 gems, and am currently sitting at 250 gold. The income is so high that I’m actually going to buy a commander tag.

If you want a braindead easy way to gather money, there’s a elder wood log farm at Rayham Bayt in Malchiors Leap. Go there with your alts, chop the wood, and then do whatever you want for a few hours, then come back and chop the wood again. It is about 30 silver per toon, so if you have a lot of alts it is several gold of windfall every few hours. It is fast and easy.

Gather your quartz. That stuff is valuable, and it takes 10 minutes out of your day to do. If you have the home node you’ll get enough to make a ley-line infused tool, which sells for 5 gold or so. 5 gold in 10 minutes is a steal, but if you can’t craft it then you can sell the quarts for 2g to 2.5g. Drytop itself is a decent way to make money, since it mass-produces coarse sand and the geodes you gather can buy keys to open up the locked chests.

Heck, every HoT map meta is good for cash. You just have to commit and be there early enough to get the 200% contribution. The easiest map for this is Auric Basin, which by happenstance is also loaded with ancient wood logs and orichalcum ore. You can see at a glance which events need doing, and the only “organizing” you need to do is the taxi for the big event, or maybe a small group to do some of the harder events. After AB is Dragon Stand, which needs bodies but tends to organize itself.. Around map close a lot of people will stand around and join a squad, so when the group fragments into different maps everybody can taxi in on the commander instantly. It is recommended to do each map, though, as getting enough of the map specific ascended material lets you craft jeweled deldrimoor and damask, which when bought on the TP nets you around 100% profit.

I’ve been making quite a bit of bank in, get this, Tangled Depths. I’ve been trying to run the meta a lot lately, even though I already have a success on my belt.

Once you’ve navigated the map, the rewards are quite good, even for failed events. Once you’ve gotten a lot of ley-line crystals, buy a crap ton of chak acid and use it to dissolve the crystals that cover the entirety of the map. You’ll get a large amount of random loot.

Also, it is good practice for the Gerent.

+1.

You might say we were… stealth nerfed

I have both full zerker and full viper on my reaper.

So far, I prefer zerker. The condi set by itself feels quite lackluster, actually. I’ll be ticking away fro 4k-5k damage, where I would be hitting 15k with Gravedigger. Also, the zerker set is less reliant on utilities for its DPS, so if I feel it prudent to swap out wells for other utilities (against a large group of enemies, “Rise!” is a lifesaver), I can do so quite easily. Also, I do more damage in Shroud, so when things get dicey I can pop in shroud and maintain a decent offense.

There is one place that Condi beats zerker, though: Epidemic. Letting loose an epi on a champion in Dragon Stand… there’s no feeling like it. Suddenly there’s a fountain of numbers all over the place, and you’re hitting everything for 15k per second for indeterminate amounts of time. So you’re rocking around 50k damage per cast with Epidemic, maybe more, and the 12 second recharge means its always available when you need it.

The hard part is fulfilling those conditions. Though there is no skill that is arguably as damaging as Epidemic, there is also no skill that is as situational. Getting the right circumstances for a full epidemic is hard, since its maximum damage is dependent on other classes running viper gear as well.

I don’t mind the taxis. I mind finding them.

Open the LFG panel at any time, and you’ll see a near endless list of appearing and disappearing LFGs for countless events. Finding a specific one before it fills is extremely difficult.

The LFG needs more categories to split everything out of “Living World”.

I have a fairly new guild that is run successfully on a regular basis. Though it is best to do it in the afternoon/evening when the most people are on.

They’re called [TDMS]. I recently joined the guild, but I’ll see if I can get you an invite.

I actually expected a proper guide when I came in here. I’ve managed to succeed at the meta without following what you’ve listed. Mostly because you’re lucky if 84 players actually arrive. Nuhoch lane is run with 15 frequently because the other lanes just can’t spare the extra 9 players.

Yes, the removal of dungeon rewards was a cash grab. Its not like inflation of in-game currencies is a reoccurring problem in MMOs or that the gold to gem conversion scaled with inflation anyway.

Aomine.5012:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The premise of this whole thread is fundamentally flawed. You are positing that gold is harder to get, and everything is more expensive.

Where do you think everything comes from? Those are people selling the mats for a profit, AKA making gold. You can make gold just as easily by gathering materials and selling them. You shouldn’t be lamenting the fact that things are more expensive, you should be celebrating that it is far faster to get gold due to how much everything sells for. Since the release of HoT, I’ve been making bank. Not by running dungeons or flipping on the TP, but by just playing the game and gathering materials.

The nerf to dungeons was a nerf to the amount of gold dropped from the sky. There are still ways to make money drop from the sky that doesn’t involve running dungeons. Every event you complete, every bag you open, every item you sell to an NPC vendor, every bauble as a map reward, you are getting gold from thin air. Every player is. Gold is still being put into the economy.

You think it the wrong way. TP is not where the money used to come from.

What money used to come from is dgn/fractal gold reward and vender selling.
Gold does not magically pop out of TP. The gold you get from selling mats are gold that people originally got from dgn/fractal/vender. Now the main source: dgn/fractal has a decline in gold reward, the gold becomes much more scarce.

You have completely missed the point. The point is you can still have an income that doesn’t involve gold coming out of thin air.

The premise of this whole thread is fundamentally flawed. You are positing that gold is harder to get, and everything is more expensive.

Where do you think everything comes from? Those are people selling the mats for a profit, AKA making gold. You can make gold just as easily by gathering materials and selling them. You shouldn’t be lamenting the fact that things are more expensive, you should be celebrating that it is far faster to get gold due to how much everything sells for. Since the release of HoT, I’ve been making bank. Not by running dungeons or flipping on the TP, but by just playing the game and gathering materials.

The nerf to dungeons was a nerf to the amount of gold dropped from the sky. There are still ways to make money drop from the sky that doesn’t involve running dungeons. Every event you complete, every bag you open, every item you sell to an NPC vendor, every bauble as a map reward, you are getting gold from thin air. Every player is. Gold is still being put into the economy.

Mostly I just do whatever to get gold.

#1: HoT map meta events. These net a surprising amount of cash. The map specific currencies can also be used to buy things like Auric Keys and Chak Acid, which net more cash. It doesn’t matter which one you pick, either.

#2: Gathering. A lot of basic materials have gone up in price. Elder wood logs are two silver now, and those things are everywhere. Aside from that, flax is still a good thing to gather, as is any ores not named silver, gold, or mithril.

#3: Dry Top. Coarse Sand is valuable, and you get a lot of it doing events there. Also you can buy keys to open chests for extra stuff, so that works there, too. Also quartz is valuable, as are the things you can craft with quartz like Ley-Line tools.

#4: Silverwastes. I don’t really go there, but it is still good for cash.

#5: Treasure Mushrooms. Yes, the chances of getting the invisible shoes is nill, but if you do get it, hello 1500 gold.

foste.3098:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This puts Anet into a sticky wicket. Thief players want to be stronger, but thieves have to be the weakest.
.

The same can be said for mesmers, they are stronger in a small fight/solo since their illusions do not get cleaved down. But do mesmers have a issue in team fights? Yes, unless they run a bunker spec, but are they otherwise totally useless? Not by a long shot, on any build. Thief is just a flawed class by design, nerf its mobility and buff something else (not damage).

It really can’t. Two classes can’t be the weakest. Only one class can be the weakest. Likewise, mesmers don’t have as much mobility and easy access to stealth. The mesmer doesn’t always have first move advantage.

Likewise, I wouldn’t call thieves useless, either. Regardless, there’s a bit of history here. For awhile, there was a gigantic “mesmers are useless” campaign going around. It was so pervasive that Helseth made a video about quitting mesmers because “thief was just so much better”. While no one can deny that mesmer has unique utilities and group support, it didn’t matter because in a straight up fight, thief would beat mesmer. Mesmers were walking bait for thieves: unable to escape, unable to defend themselves.

Agemnon.4608:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

One of the issues with the Thief is that the whole idea behind the class has a pretty big limitation. Much like how Reapers have to be the most formidable in a straight up brawl, thieves have to be the weakest. Let me explain:

The Thief is a class that has countless escapes and the ability to approach in stealth, so they always have the first strike advantage and they have high burst. This makes them both evasive and aggressive, and changes much of the fight to be not about necessarily killing a thief, but fighting one off. Considering that, if there were a class that was overall weaker in a straight up fight (basically you both whipped out melee weapons and went right up into each others’ face), then that class could never be played. It would auto-lose to the thief, who would approach from stealth and kill the class on the Thief’s own terms.

The Thief class inherently “unfair”, in that sense. While it is fun to play Thieves, it is not fun to be killed by Thieves. So, to balance the theme of a “invisible high burst” class, they have to make everybody stronger. Strong enough that they can fight off a Thief even with their first move advantage. The ability for the Thief to pick and choose their fights mandates this kind of balance.

This puts Anet into a sticky wicket. Thief players want to be stronger, but thieves have to be the weakest. If you increase Thief damage or durability, you run the very real risk of making another class obsolete.

I wouldn’t mind more group buffs, myself. I don’t PVP anymore, so I wouldn’t be able to say what group buffs are needed, but as it stands thieves have to trait pretty heavily to get any sort of team support. An idea I heard once was to make the AoE effect of venoms baseline, and roll the recharge reduction into Leeching Venoms. Restoring some of the lost boon stealing and adding a few more methods of boon stealing is another.

I strongly disagree because every class has something it can bring to the table: Ele has lots of mobility and AoE with great burning, Guardian while lacking mobility gives lots of support as well as DPS and burning, Necro lots of conditions and boon steals, engineers lots of great utility and conditions, ranger healing and outrageous single target ranged damage, and thief…just really has mobility and stealth. Since reveal is around thief needs a buff to make up for stealth’s lost utility. The problem with reveal is if I didn’t want to stealth I wouldn’t and six seconds is more than enough time to kill a thief, thus fake casting with cloak and dagger or black powder isn’t an option and even if it were someone else could just reveal after shadow refuge or some other skill gets casted. This makes stealth unviable and something needs to be given to thief to make up for that.

“Strong enough that they can fight off a Thief even with their first move advantage. "

But it should have to be an uphill battle for whoever the thief hit while it should be the thief’s job to keep that advantage then disengage if he somehow loses it. The problem with thief being weak is its only viable source of damage is melee with big damage or daze being available from stealth and from behind, which means if you try fighting with shortbow someone could type /laugh and still have enough time to kill you the damage is so weak so shortbow is only viable for its 5 ability which doesn’t even damage and cost initiative. Thus, due to the situational and positional nature of the damage it needs to be high to compensate for the skill required. You don’t have the range or healing of a ranger, utility, AoE, or versaility of an elementalist (who always has something off cooldown), etc., so where does one make up the difference? Thief is simply underpowered and was even before reveal came about.

You have completely missed the point. I ended my post saying I wouldn’t mind more group buffs for thieves, then you say you disagree and your whole point is that you want more group buffs for thieves.

Allow me to elaborate: a “straight up fight” means that two players engage each other without any gimmicks or tricks. Basically, it is the product of a character’s DPS and their effective HP, with a few class mechanics thrown in. Whomever is highest will win a “straight up fight”. The Reaper, being the slowest class, must be the most formidable, or else the Reaper could never see play, because everyone would beat the class that happens to be faster and also stronger than the Reaper. This can be extrapolated a bit: If one class is more mobile and evasive than another class, then it also has to be less formidable than the less mobile class. Or else you’ve got a big paper-rock-scissors problem, wherein one class just beats another.

Thus Thieves, being the most mobile and the most evasive, must be the least formidable. The important thing to note here is that this has nothing to do with group utility. Sure, group utility can alleviate some of the pressure, but group utility doesn’t mean squat of class X pummels you every time it walks by, and you can neither fight it off or get away. The dead provide no utility.

The second important thing to note is that this does not mean the thief should never beat another class. What it does mean is that the victory of the thief must be due to trickery and exploiting weaknesses particular to the class they are fighting. If the thief can win just by following you around auto attacking, then we’ve got a big problem.

And this is the dilemma: how do you buff the thief, without making it more formidable than another class in a straight up fight? If you cross that line, then suddenly elementalists or mesmers end up being horrible. As it happens, better group buffs is one such way to do that.

The thief is good for more than mobility and stealth. It is just that this is how everyone plays them. Thieves are potent debuffers, capable of inflicting plenty of poison, weakness, and blind (which cuts healing, cuts damage, cuts endurance regen, and outright avoids attacks). Thieves are also good at control, having multiple sources for immobilize and stun/knockdown. I would like to see these strengths, along with boon stealing, more emphasized, as well a few reworks to traits/skills to give them more group utility.

The worst thing about staff is that all the other weapons feel weak now. Yes, technically D/D has the same damage, but in practice you’ll find enemies face you way too often to make use of it. Staff works from any direction. The hard part is mastering the sweet spot for weakening charge, which I find myself having to redo regularly due to how much I alt.

One of the issues with the Thief is that the whole idea behind the class has a pretty big limitation. Much like how Reapers have to be the most formidable in a straight up brawl, thieves have to be the weakest. Let me explain:

The Thief is a class that has countless escapes and the ability to approach in stealth, so they always have the first strike advantage and they have high burst. This makes them both evasive and aggressive, and changes much of the fight to be not about necessarily killing a thief, but fighting one off. Considering that, if there were a class that was overall weaker in a straight up fight (basically you both whipped out melee weapons and went right up into each others’ face), then that class could never be played. It would auto-lose to the thief, who would approach from stealth and kill the class on the Thief’s own terms.

The Thief class inherently “unfair”, in that sense. While it is fun to play Thieves, it is not fun to be killed by Thieves. So, to balance the theme of a “invisible high burst” class, they have to make everybody stronger. Strong enough that they can fight off a Thief even with their first move advantage. The ability for the Thief to pick and choose their fights mandates this kind of balance.

This puts Anet into a sticky wicket. Thief players want to be stronger, but thieves have to be the weakest. If you increase Thief damage or durability, you run the very real risk of making another class obsolete.

I wouldn’t mind more group buffs, myself. I don’t PVP anymore, so I wouldn’t be able to say what group buffs are needed, but as it stands thieves have to trait pretty heavily to get any sort of team support. An idea I heard once was to make the AoE effect of venoms baseline, and roll the recharge reduction into Leeching Venoms. Restoring some of the lost boon stealing and adding a few more methods of boon stealing is another.

Lanaeris.3845:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You know, there’s two kinds of conspiracy theories that I hear often. The first kind is the one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain a complicated issue where nobody is in control. The second kind is is one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain away common sense. This conspiracy is the latter.

You guys are trying to come up with an elaborate deception to explain something that is really simple. Anet sets up a gem exchange system, and puts in a 30% reduction on the gold -> gem exchange to prevent stock market exchanges. They used a fixed set of gems as a basket, and then program a dynamic exchange rate based on ratio of gems that have been created or destroyed in respect to this basket. The whole “manual manipulation” thing is silly and pointless, when you can just write a simple program that does it for you. It isn’t like the whole “people will buy gems if gems are cheap” thing is going to go away, so you set up an automated system to have the price of gems be adjusted automatically, and let basic economic principle take care of the rest. It wouldn’t even be that hard. Its just fractions!

The throttle on gold -> gem conversions isn’t mean to make things a gigantic gamble. It is meant to make things a stupid gamble. It is there to make using real money to buy gemstore items more appealing, and in-game gold less appealing. I’m fairly certain it acts as a market stabilizer, too.

And there you have it. The conspiracy is that no, Anet didn’t go with an automated, low-maintenance system and explicitly weighted it toward real money exchanges. Instead, they secretly manually manipulate the prices of gems and the prices of items just to mildly inconvenience players, but only in such a way that it makes sense to economists.

I’d hate to be the one to tell you this… wait, no. Scratch that. I love to be the one to tell you this: Liquid rewards in game don’t mean squat regarding the gem conversion. Under an automated system, the price of gems would adjust to inflation eventually. Under a conspiracy based “they’re controlling EVERYTHING!” system, they’d just manually adjust the price anyway, so again it doesn’t matter. Either way that line of thinking doesn’t work.

There is also no way that your exchange can be construed as a misrepresentation. If you buy a $25 gift card for 2000 gems, that is exactly what you get. These gems don’t go away. You can buy the same things you wanted to buy. If you happen to buy something and later regret the decision, there was still no deception. You got exactly what you paid for, as it was listed. Anet isn’t lightly adjusting the value of gem -> gold exchanges ever so slightly just to eek out cash from you. It wouldn’t work. You can still pay the same amount of money for the same amount of gems to buy the same item, and if you happen to want to convert gems -> gold anyway, you end up in a better position than you were prior. The entirety of the whole “buy it for real money instead” hinges solely on you having the exact amount of gold such that the supposed false-inflation for highly demanded items would adjust the price into a range where you not only don’t possess enough gold, but also lack the ability to make that amount of gold in the allotted timeframe. To elaborate in list form, you would need to be someone who:

A)Is in that narrow range where you could’ve afforded it, but can’t after the gem price spike.
B)Has a playschedule that prevents you from acquiring the difference in price before that item leaves the store (set timeframe undetermined)
C)Is in that specific group that highly desires this item so much that they have to get it
D)Is a person who does not have a resting amount of gems in your pack, thus forcing you to acquire them.
E)Is a person capable of shelling out money as needed to buy the product, but also be a person who would shell out money to buy any product. In a sense, you have to be IRL rich enough to spend cash on a frivolous game, but not IRL rich enough to not care about spending cash on a frivolous game.
F)Is in a specific, very narrow section, wherein the natural inflation that would emerge from a high demand gemstore item via an automated system would insufficient to move the price of that item into such a state that conditions A, B, and D are fulfilled, and thus special intervention is required.

This is not an untapped market. It is a fluke in customer demographics. There is no money to be earned in this. It is the most trivial of things to be deceptive about.

I love your arguments, but I think you are using far too many “can’t do this” “this is impossible” type logical statements. Don’t see things so black and white. I am not saying there is a group of people watching the gem exchange at every single second on Anet’s side; That’s outlandish like a conspiracy. I am thinking much more concrete and simple. Point being, there is no law against changing their numbers in any small or large way, they can do whatever they please. The world given as an example, if there is money on the line and there is no law prohibiting you from pursuing extra money, chances are you are going to go for it. I am pointing out how easy it is for them to tweak something because it is unregulated. (I am not calling for action from anyone)

There is not a single “can’t” in my arguments. “Can’t” only appears when you are dealing with conspiracies over elaborate and large issues. This is a conspiracy over a simple and small issues. Here, the question is “why”. Like, “why would Anet adjust the income of liquid assets to encourage buying gems when they could’ve just adjusted the exchange rate far more easily”. Or, “why would Anet be manually adjusting the exchange rate when the program as described would take care of everything automatically”. Or, “why would the exchange be based around fixing a gem-exchange gamble when the exchange rate is so heavily taxed in one direction that gambling is heavily discouraged”.

Things like that. The difficulty in your hypothesis is that it is asserting a series of counter-intuitive and deceptive methods to accomplish an ends best achieved by simple and obvious means. It would make for a great Monty Python sketch, and if Dale Gribble said it I would find it funny, but when someone really thinks it…

Lanaeris.3845:

Side note, it amuses me to see how many people are so stressed and angry in their lives that they have to attack the points of someone else’s claims or opinions. Don’t like it, move on. Stop trying to impose your views on mine. This thread would disappear if people didn’t care or didn’t want to attack someone else. It’s sill really.

This is a bit funny here. You made the thread yourself, but then take the high ground and say that it should be buried, instead of having people respond to what you’ve said.. That’s not how it works. If you’ve come to an incorrect conclusion and someone corrects you on it, you should be happy that someone has helped you fix your errors, not defiant because people don’t accept them. If you make a hypothesis, it has to stand up to criticism.

You can’t get away with making an assertion and backtracking by calling it an “opinion”. Opinions are value judgements. Whether chocolate ice cream is good or not is an opinion. Whether Anet is manually manipulating gem prices for hidden motives is not an opinion. It is an assertion of fact. More than that, it is a statement of character, asserting dishonesty in how Anet handles things. The reason why you come to these conclusions is because you’re in a wrong state of mind. You are looking for evil in Anet, and it has led you down a corridor of madness.

There’s also a hypocrisy here: by claiming that others shouldn’t impose their view onto yours and should move on, you are imposing that view on to others. That aside, truth be told, I like doing this. Sometimes I like to pick things apart and see how an argument works. I also like imposing a “view” because the wrong kind of “view”, such as one that seeks evil in others regardless of logic, can cause further problems down the line. Believe it or not, your “view” is not some super special way you get to be a unique individual. It has implications, produces effects, alters behavior. A bad “view” causes bad things to happen. And thus, I have no qualms about correcting someone elses view. You would understand this, as you had no qualms about trying to correct other people’s views.

You know, there’s two kinds of conspiracy theories that I hear often. The first kind is the one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain a complicated issue where nobody is in control. The second kind is is one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain away common sense. This conspiracy is the latter.

You guys are trying to come up with an elaborate deception to explain something that is really simple. Anet sets up a gem exchange system, and puts in a 30% reduction on the gold -> gem exchange to prevent stock market exchanges. They used a fixed set of gems as a basket, and then program a dynamic exchange rate based on ratio of gems that have been created or destroyed in respect to this basket. The whole “manual manipulation” thing is silly and pointless, when you can just write a simple program that does it for you. It isn’t like the whole “people will buy gems if gems are cheap” thing is going to go away, so you set up an automated system to have the price of gems be adjusted automatically, and let basic economic principle take care of the rest. It wouldn’t even be that hard. Its just fractions!

The throttle on gold -> gem conversions isn’t mean to make things a gigantic gamble. It is meant to make things a stupid gamble. It is there to make using real money to buy gemstore items more appealing, and in-game gold less appealing. I’m fairly certain it acts as a market stabilizer, too.

And there you have it. The conspiracy is that no, Anet didn’t go with an automated, low-maintenance system and explicitly weighted it toward real money exchanges. Instead, they secretly manually manipulate the prices of gems and the prices of items just to mildly inconvenience players, but only in such a way that it makes sense to economists.

I’d hate to be the one to tell you this… wait, no. Scratch that. I love to be the one to tell you this: Liquid rewards in game don’t mean squat regarding the gem conversion. Under an automated system, the price of gems would adjust to inflation eventually. Under a conspiracy based “they’re controlling EVERYTHING!” system, they’d just manually adjust the price anyway, so again it doesn’t matter. Either way that line of thinking doesn’t work.

There is also no way that your exchange can be construed as a misrepresentation. If you buy a $25 gift card for 2000 gems, that is exactly what you get. These gems don’t go away. You can buy the same things you wanted to buy. If you happen to buy something and later regret the decision, there was still no deception. You got exactly what you paid for, as it was listed. Anet isn’t lightly adjusting the value of gem → gold exchanges ever so slightly just to eek out cash from you. It wouldn’t work. You can still pay the same amount of money for the same amount of gems to buy the same item, and if you happen to want to convert gems → gold anyway, you end up in a better position than you were prior. The entirety of the whole “buy it for real money instead” hinges solely on you having the exact amount of gold such that the supposed false-inflation for highly demanded items would adjust the price into a range where you not only don’t possess enough gold, but also lack the ability to make that amount of gold in the allotted timeframe. To elaborate in list form, you would need to be someone who:

A)Is in that narrow range where you could’ve afforded it, but can’t after the gem price spike.
B)Has a playschedule that prevents you from acquiring the difference in price before that item leaves the store (set timeframe undetermined)
C)Is in that specific group that highly desires this item so much that they have to get it
D)Is a person who does not have a resting amount of gems in your pack, thus forcing you to acquire them.
E)Is a person capable of shelling out money as needed to buy the product, but also be a person who would shell out money to buy any product. In a sense, you have to be IRL rich enough to spend cash on a frivolous game, but not IRL rich enough to not care about spending cash on a frivolous game.
F)Is in a specific, very narrow section, wherein the natural inflation that would emerge from a high demand gemstore item via an automated system would insufficient to move the price of that item into such a state that conditions A, B, and D are fulfilled, and thus special intervention is required.

This is not an untapped market. It is a fluke in customer demographics. There is no money to be earned in this. It is the most trivial of things to be deceptive about.

Personally I wanted the precursor to be obtainable via alternate currencies, like how it was with high value stuff in City of Heroes. The legendary crafting mastery is basically just an experience dump to get an alternate way to pay more money for the precursor.

DeceiverX.8361:

There will always be one stat used by the masses deemed as superior; be it for damage or defense, when in reality only the pinnacle of players min-maxing their time for speed-runs will see noticeable differences.

This isn’t true. The prevalence of the zerker meta wasn’t some arbitrary superiority deemed by the masses. It was the product of how the game was designed. GW2 was made with active defenses and PVP in mind, so the ratio of damage to durability between gear sets was relatively small. After all, there’s no point to a PVP set if it specializes to the point of obsolescence. With active defenses being indiscriminate of gear types, full GC gear was designed to be fully capable on all classes. The enemies in the game were designed to be pretty basic, making them predictable and easy to herd and attack, and they were designed around the durability of a player before factoring in active defenses. Add in full healing out of combat, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for zerker dominance.

The superiority of zerker was obvious to anyone that comprehended the dodge function. You didn’t have to crunch numbers and theorycraft. You just put it own, and saw a drastic performance increase. Solo or group, overworld or not, the advantages of GC gear was obvious.

Now, to answer the OP’s question… it is complicated.

A) Condi gear works now. Viper is best, but sinister is sufficient for very quick fights, or if you already have 100% condi duration in your primary damaging condition. Generally you’ll have either full viper, or a viper/sinister mix

B)In legacy content (that is, pre-HoT), zerker is still meta.

C)In new content… it is complicated again.
1. For Elementalists, Guardians, and Thieves, Marauder is a competitor for overworld stuff. It is only 9% less damage than berserker, but adds 49% durability. The enemies in HoT are hard enough that those extra HP can mean the difference between life and death, moreso than the lost damage.
2. For Engineer and Ranger, Viper is meta. There are enemies that have high toughness, and so condition damage is better for them.
3. For anyone who is still running zerker (even the previously mentioned classes), the trait and utility setup isn’t as pure-damage based. For example, I still use zerker on my guard/ele/thief, but I frequently change out traits and utilities to defensive options instead of just pure options.
4. In raids, the meta is this: 1 zerker with a few pieces of knight gear, a condi set or two, one healer (who may also replace the tank), and the rest is zerker.

Guardians are good at projectile management, condition cleansing, block tanking, and control.

In general, don’t get caught up in armor types. Your traits, utilities, and weapons contribute far more to your playstyle than your gear does. You can be a tank in full berserker gear if you build for it.

I wouldn’t say that masteries have no sense of accomplishment. The difference between having some of them and not can be pretty huge. They affect gameplay in ways that don’t involve hitting a higher number on enemies.

Likewise, I wouldn’t farm masteries, either. I just do other stuff in Maguma Falls and the mastery points come with it. Mostly I’ve been building Viper’s sets, and doing the collections for my spec’s weapons, and in doing that I’m at rank 4+ in everything. Now that elite specs aren’t so gated behind them, masteries are quite the no-pressure system.

I wouldn’t call it hard. Many of the roles are soft, in that they are ill-defined and can be done by many classes. If I were to break it up…

Burst DPS
Sustained DPS
Ranged DPS
Burst condi DPS
Sustained condi DPS
Ranged condi DPS
Primary boon giver
Specialty boon giver
Hard CC
Soft CC
Projectile Management
Boon Stripper
Blast Finisher
Healer
Rezzer
Tank (either bulk HP, block tank, or evade tank)
Two types of DPS: AoE vs. Single Target.

With classes doing multiples roles. For example, take the Herald. The herald is the primary boon giver, giving out might/fury/swiftness and occasionally protection/regen. The herald is also the sustained DPS, having a very high damaging auto attack. With further specialization, the herald can also be the healer/projectile management. With even further specialization, sustained condi and boon stripper.

The need for each role depends on the content.

Zypher.7609:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Whomever they hired for the most recent bundles does not understand price discrimination. Anet isn’t going to get more money by only selling bundles. They’re getting less.

Yes because it is not like they have the data to back up what they are doing. Oh wait, they do.

Data is of no value to the incompetent.

Classes in GW2 aren’t like that. They aren’t divided up by “ranged class, magic class, melee class”, or “Tank, heal, DPS”. Each class was designed so that they can all function a multitude of ways. And as such, what groups will turn away really depends on how that particular group feels.

In general, if you want the best performance out of a class, you’ll want to be using melee skills whenever possible. Hanging back and just ranging with the bow is really limiting. The two best classes for damage at range are the elementalist and the guardian elite spec Dragonhunter, but in general to share buffs and heals you’ll all be standing close to each other and meleeing whenever possible.

If you’re just going for the nature theme, two rangers are fine. In a raid, however, to be let into a group one of you will have to be a healer, while the other probably a condi ranger.

Whomever they hired for the most recent bundles does not understand price discrimination. Anet isn’t going to get more money by only selling bundles. They’re getting less.

I don’t buy it. There’s no reason why raids would suddenly become faceroll just because dungeons were considered non-faceroll content. Likewise, with enrage timers, it is very much in their design to not let everything work. That’s why full GC groups have to slam their heads against the boss dozens of times just to squeeze out a single kill.

Purple Miku.7032:

Just so you know, everything is capable of working.

Raids say no.

As to the OP, yes condi ranger is really good. I think it is still the second highest condi damage set… given your target is willing to stand still in all of your traps. Axe / Torch, use quickdraw to spam bonfire on a 9 second cooldown. Don’t have axe and torch on the same weapon set, so you can swap between them with just two weapons.

If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.