Guild Wars 2

LordByron.8369:

FGS is a glitch…..
One of them has even been fixed in april’s patch thus showing how is a glitch.
Phantasms also are immune to many aoes.

And takes 3 seconds to get 2 swordmen + 1 duelist or 8 to have 3 swordmen.

Ele is not top dps without fgs… as said mesmer tops it.

There is a reason why only organized groups likes eles…because with a slightly less reliable Group (see slightly suboptimal dps or bad guardian) ele becomes suddenly useless (and no…..its not L2p evasions, cond cleanse etc are a finite number).

1. FGS is not a glitch. FGS is not getting patched. FGS rushing without a wall by using a blink is a glitch and is getting patched.
2. Phanatsms are not immune to most AoEs.
3. Ele has the undisputed highest dps without FGS.
4. A mesmer that is running s/s + s/p is a waste of a party slot. It combines decent single target dps with absolutely no utility.
5. Condi cleanses are irrelevant, why are you getting condis?

BobbyTwoHands.1053:

Faux.1937:

D/D caltrops is GREAT leveling build, But once you hit harder content, are geared up and do dungeons/fotm or ANYTHING with more than 2 players you want to go more zerk for PvE.

Try heal: Signet of Malice and S/P spam number 3, 5 and autos, Number 2 is fun to, teleport + Immob and Condi removal makes it fun.

Thanks for the advice. As long as I don’t need to use the shortbow, I suck with that thing.

You better start liking the shortbow because its a requirement for dungeons/fractals. It has the most spammable blast finisher in the game.

Wow, 6 hours without a reply o.0. Great job, this is insanely impressive.

Rising Dusk.2408:

RemiRome.8495:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Imagine if each of her shots added a long duration bleed too

Not sure if serious.

Her basic attack bleeds are short and weak now. Those don’t count! I was thinking like a 20s bleed for each hit of her Unload you know, to add some condi pressure into this that you actually cared to remove.

That wouldn’t change anything for most groups.

SirDrygan.1823:

Profession Skills
Elementalist

Conjure Fiery Greatsword – Base damage has been reduced by 33%

GG…….

Typical boss fights went from 3 seconds to 4 seconds. GG.

OP, I’m willing to bet your the kind of player that favors the “afk-while-safe-spot-ranging-a-boss” method. Fortunately for us all, skipping has an 8 year precedent. Deal with it.

hendo.1940:

Indeed it’s pathetic, you are jealous.

I’m not jealous, it’s just a glaring reminder of how dull the speed clear/kill meta is.

Because using the skill with the undisputed highest DPS to kill something fast is pathetic… #logic

When it lets guilds like yours cheese fights where you lack the skill to actually dodge the mechanics to kill bosses, then yes, a weapon having this high DPS is pathetic.

I love how long it took you to break out the insults. Also you should probably see members of a guild play before you say they can’t dodge.
edit: Just out of curiosity, what guild are you in?

hendo.1940:

Wow, fiery greatswords, that’s so interesting.

Can’t wait for that trash weapon to be nerfed, it’s pathetic.

Because using the skill with the undisputed highest DPS to kill something fast is pathetic… #logic

Saint.5647:

How is it that meta groups are exploiters yet every pug strategy is some sort of cheese method of camping in a safe spot and taking 10 min to range down a boss? How is that not ‘exploiting’?

Any pug can afk-range a boss but very few pugs have the coordination to stack correctly. Apparently tactics that can’t be used by every group = exploit.

Why do people always complain about this stuff? I’ve never played a game where killing trash is rewarding or worth the time spent. Someone please enlighten me as to which game has rewarding loot drops from trash mobs.

Just for the sake of coordinated groups, how do they compare if might is irrelevant? In my usual groups we maintain constant 25 might stacks and between 15-25 vuln. We also have permanent fury. So, since sword’s might stacking is useless in this scenario, would GS be better overall sheerly for the vulnerability stacking from maul?

So what I understand so far from this thread:
1. For single targets, sword has superior DPS.
2. Sword auto-attack #2 does not cleave.
3.(?) For cleaving GS has superior DPS.

From the calculations above I keep seeing that sword is ~25% stronger than GS on single targets. Is that 25% including pet damage? If not the gap would be considerably smaller assuming that your running 2 felines.

I didn’t say you were making it up. I said that 4/5 of the people in that run weren’t in DD.

Tree.3916:

Anierna.6918:

I can’t imagine anyone not killing something with 4x FGS. I’ve seen wipes with only 2x FGS, but never with 4×.

I don’t need to imagine it, I’ve seen your group wipe to the Ghost Eater and Spider Queen with 4x fgs on live stream. I’m sure it was a case of someone failing spectacularly, but nonetheless it happens. High risk high reward strategy and all that.

Nobody from DD streams. We did have a trial stream a tour with 4 trials/1 member but that trial didn’t pass. Its not surprising it failed.

@ guanlong But if you use basilisk venom right as he reaches the stack then he’ll die before the stun wears out making any reflects irrelevant.

Tree.3916:

And then you have the runs where your whole team wipes because you still manage to somehow fail to kill it even with 4x fgs, right?

We actually had something like this happen yesterday. One person with fgs had to solo and took off half of ghost eater’s hp before he became invuln again.
@ani Thats a long pull. Try using s/f and run straight to the pillar using swirling winds to destroy his spit.

LoSing may not be the fastest but just attacking him outright is super slow. Its much more fun to watch his health bar instantly disappear.

@saint and ani Replacing the guard with a ranger would increase kill times but our problem is that we only have 1 person that actively plays ranger.

OK, thanks for the clarification. Now i get to use my sunrise from levels 1-80.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

So you can keep transmuting from 1-80 as long as you don’t mess up (gotta keep the skin). The splitter, then will give you the full legendary back.

Transmuting history is not saved, what I mean by that is this: a splitter will give back the skin item (in the case of a legendary, a full legendary, in the case of a simple skin, just a skin) the generic weapon, and the upgrades. It doesn’t know what you transmuted from before that incarnation you are splitting.

So I can transmute unlimited different stat items while keeping the same skin but still use a splitter to get the legendary + the latest stat item that I used?

How exactly do these work? For an example: I’m going to create a new character and want to stick a legendary this character. Now I also want to use the legendary from levels 1-80. If I transmute it multiple times will 1 splitter break apart all of the items? Would I have to use multiple splitters to get the original legendary back? Or is that even possible after transmuting a skin multiple times?

Is sword/warhorn significantly stronger than GS? And if so, how much stronger. (assuming max buffs and meta build)

hendo.1940:

Clumsy.6257:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

When you say its the meta team composition, people might be fooled and actually believe it.

If by meta you mean the fastest, then yes it is. The speed you get from stacking warriors and guardians isn’t acceptable by my standards, however I’m not sure about yours.

@hendo Notice i clearly said dungeons in my original post. I didn’t mention fractals. And yes all bosses in regular dungeons are easily pulled and melted in seconds (there are 2-3 exceptions though).

If stacking eles and thieves was meta, all of the world records would do it. But… they don’t

And if I recall correctly, HOTW was a dungeon. And if I also recall correctly, the last time you guys tried FGS’ing Ginva you didn’t kill the retaliation totem and suicided yourselves instead.

No we die on Ginva because we try to kill him before the retaliation totem comes back up and unfortunately we haven’t been able to fully down him in that time frame yet.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

When you say its the meta team composition, people might be fooled and actually believe it.

If by meta you mean the fastest, then yes it is. The speed you get from stacking warriors and guardians isn’t acceptable by my standards, however I’m not sure about yours.

@hendo Notice i clearly said dungeons in my original post. I didn’t mention fractals. And yes all bosses in regular dungeons are easily pulled and melted in seconds (there are 2-3 exceptions though).

Amadeus.7980:

True that, however, as I have stated before aswell.

I’m not here to get a comparison to the 25/30/0/0/15 build. I know it exists and I know it’s perks. I made this build because I don’t like that you can make an ultimate build that everyone should go with. I made it from skratch and just wanted some feedback and maybe some suggestions to improve it. Not to just skratch it and go with 25/30/0/0/15..

I’d love to have build diversity but your build and 25/30/0/0/15 have the exact same survivability while 25/30/0/0/15 is has considerably higher damage. It just isn’t an option at this point. The only build that competes with 25/30/0/0/15 is its fraternal twin, 30/30/0/0/10.

Dempsey.8760:

Clumsy.6257:

But with the meta team composition of 2 thieves and 2 elementalists

Not everything Anierna says is correct.

I knew 2 thieves and 2 eles were the best damage long before I ever met anierna.

As others have said thieves are top tier in dungeons. Most people complain that thief is squishy and lacks survivability. But with the meta team composition of 2 thieves and 2 elementalists survivability becomes irrelevant because most bosses die before they can get their first attack in. And even without insta-killing bosses thief has incredible amounts of survivability compared to elementalists.

in what game mode?

Anierna.6918:

Saint, Clumsy, we don’t pug anymore. I haven’t had to in about a month. So this is all academic. Just saying.

This is true. I feel bad for people that have to wade through the sewer that is the pug community.

Saint.5647:

I think folks are getting caught up on AP not being 100% effective at vetting PuGs. The thing is, nothing will tell you with 100% certainty who is good, and who isn’t. You will have 500AP studs and 12,000 AP duds.

However, as someone said, it’s the best first glance assessment you can make. If you care to build a good party, you should be asking for trait spread and general understanding of the encounter. You should be gear checking to make sure they are running appropriate gear.

Now, if you don’t want to do all of that for some reason, yet you still want to gate the group, AP is the default fallback. Why? Because it’s easily visible and for nearly all intents and purposes tell you roughly how much content the player has completed. They may never have touched dungeons before but that’s the gamble you take in using AP. You use it on the hope that out of all the content they’ve done to earn X,000 AP, somewhere along the line….they learned how to play the game.

Age doesn’t tell you about a person’s life experience. There are children who have experienced more hardship than some elderly. Generally though, you can assume that a 70 year old will have more experience with handling stress than a 10 year old. Not always true, but it’s the assumption to make if you intend to judge someone on just their age.

Same to be said of AP. If you want a quick gauge, then you can think that someone with 10,000k AP has had more time and chances to learn how to play the game and their class than someone with 500. If you want to know more, then demand more of your team.

Or you could use the absolute best pug filter and force them to ping their gear. I rarely end up with bad pugs if everyone pings correct gear.

Iris Ng.9845:

I once ate the full retaliating damage of my own fgs#4. It was roughly 40k. So be careful with that. Ha!

Hmmm…. this sounds like something I’ve seen before.

Zelyhn.8069:

Many people are going to hate me but I can’t wait until they design all movement-attack skills like FGS rush or whirlwind attack to hit foes only once per use.

I am tired of banging mobs against the walls. I want real fights.

Then we will see all those “meta” ele and warriors fail so hard not knowing what to do

That won’t change anything except the speed of kills. Ele will still have top dps. The general gameplay won’t change. People will still pull bosses into walls so the bosses won’t keep walking backwards.

Molch.2078:

Clumsy.6257:

Thats just not true. Warriors skill rotation is by far the simplest in the game. The 2 most complex would be d/f elementalist and might stacking engineer.

gs/axe rotation uses dps-cooldowns from gs and aa from axe. Now lets look at some other metas:

- guardian. same as warrior, but with 10 sec cd.
- thief. 5-1111-5-1111-5-1111…
- ranger. 111111111…
- necro. uses mostly 1 and maybe 1-2 skills on cd. Oh, and f1 flash on cd.
- staff ele. 12111-12111-121111…
- lh ele. F11111111111111F11111111111…
- mesmer. unless you need a good reflection uptime with warden: just use every phantasm on cd and then 111111111…

d/f elementalist and might stacking engineer are probably the only two rotations that are more complex then the warriors.

Apparently you’ve never played guardian, staff ele, or LH ele. Guardians rotation is more like GS, 2, 3, 5, s/f, 1,1,1,1,1,1. Thats without utilities and using aegis to block strong attacks. Staff ele is more like earth, 2, fire, 2, arc. bril., arc. wave, 1,1,1,2. LH ele has a ridiculous rotation. Fire, 2, 4, 3, earth, arc. bril., arc. wave, 4, swap to focus, 4, LH, 1…., then repeat.

Rynn.1324:

Mjgander.1905:

-DPS rotation. This is opinion, but if you play the meta pve builds, and see the different class rotations, I have to say that warrior has it far more fun, it’s fluid, more engaging so on. Staff ele? 5,2,1. Guardian? 1111. Ranger? 1111 (Probably not quite accurate, but most classes seem to use 2-3 skills for max dps, it’s boring.)

Is this accurate? My warrior is only 31 so far, so I’m not sure about it. But all of my various engineer builds use like every ability I have and generally require specific timing. Even our best heal (healing turret) requires a specific trigger pattern to ensure you get both the cleanse and the blast combo. T_T

Thats just not true. Warriors skill rotation is by far the simplest in the game. The 2 most complex would be d/f elementalist and might stacking engineer.

News flash: skipping, soloing, and selling dungeons has an 8 year precedent.

Giotto.2607:

This video is funny!!!
So it is the Ele killed the boss, not the 3 Wars and the Mesmer!!!
The ele in that video only did a flame+blast stack might, staff fire 3+5, icebow 5, so it’s the ele killed the boss, biggest joke ever heard.

Did you even watch the video? The ele could have cast meteor shower and gone on a coffee break and he still would have out-damaged the absolute max DPS a warrior could ever hope to achieve.

Alucardrx.8930:

So as im reinstalling the game after almost 2 years nothing changed? Warrior is still the only class that isn’t weak in PVE?

Oh well, guess ill play Mesmer and Necro for fun only.

Warriors are very weak in PvE. It has close to bottom tier damage. Most experienced groups have a max of 1 warrior for banners. The only positive side is that warrior is absurdly easy to play. Thats why pugs love them. A mediocre warrior will be better than any other class played by mediocre players.

I tried this less than 12 hours ago and you do get the stats of the original item.

Flissy.4093:

Clumsy.6257:

http://www.gamestatistics.fr/Guild%20Wars%202%20survey%202013_Full%20Report.pdf

For all those that think warrior is the most popular, your wrong. That url is to a survey done by gamestatistics.fr and if you scroll down towards the bottom you can see the class percentages. The most played is guardian at 18% and tied for second place are warrior and elementalist.
edit: That link downloads a pdf of the survey.

Alternatively we can go by figures ArenaNet posted themselves by looking here. Note that both sources are just general gameplay – not specifically PvE (Dungeons).

That was posted over half a year ago. This survey is fairly recent.

http://www.gamestatistics.fr/Guild%20Wars%202%20survey%202013_Full%20Report.pdf

For all those that think warrior is the most popular, your wrong. That url is to a survey done by gamestatistics.fr and if you scroll down towards the bottom you can see the class percentages. The most played is guardian at 18% and tied for second place are warrior and elementalist.
edit: That link downloads a pdf of the survey.

Karolis.4261:

Clumsy.6257:

(Assuming your talking about PvE: ) That depends on whether or not that gear is berserker. If it is, then your good to go. And thieves couldn’t possibly be in a better spot for PvE. The current dungeon meta requires 2 thieves and the fractal meta highly recommends bringing at least 1 thief.

Current meta, maybe. Current “LFG dungeon meta” don’t like thieves, god forbid if theres 2 in same pt. And when it comes to stealth and skipping… my refuges and smoke screen blasts are always ignored by pug grps, what in certain situations even gets me(stealthed) in trouble, as for example someones pulled mobs aoe kittenstorm in a skipping path.

Of course. Your comparing apples to lettuce. Pug teams are lucky to finish AC p1+3 in under an hour with multiple wipes. Coordinated meta teams usually finish AC p 1,2,3 in under 30 minutes with a max of 1 wipe. You also have to consider the difference of skill between the average pug thief and thieves that run with coordinated groups.

(Assuming your talking about PvE: ) That depends on whether or not that gear is berserker. If it is, then your good to go. And thieves couldn’t possibly be in a better spot for PvE. The current dungeon meta requires 2 thieves and the fractal meta highly recommends bringing at least 1 thief.

The problem is that the average player seriously thought that twisted marionette was difficult content when in reality it was a joke. Imagine introducing actual difficult content. So your answer is no. Dungeons are incredibly easy provided you aren’t a terrible player.

(For PvE only – results may vary with the skill level of pugs)
Let me start off by saying both thief and warrior have been my mains for over a year. Warrior lacks depth. The class is incredibly easy to master and not very useful. They’ve been reduced to banner-mules in the current PvE. Thieves, on the other hand, are incredibly hard to master due to a lack of survivability until you actually master the class. They have the second highest damage and provide party-wide stealth. Both have a dedicated slot in most parties. I’d recommend you make one of each although if I had to pick one it would be thief (because they’re less boring).

I’m going to tell you how to compare so you don’t have to ask about stuff like this. Google search for “gw2 buildcraft” and follow the link. Click the thief symbol up at the top. Put in your old weapon, sigils, armor, runes/orbs, and traits. Now look to the right side where it has all your stats. At the bottom there should be a number called effective power. Write it down. Now go back to your weapons and put in the celestial dagger and it’s sigil. Now compare the effective powers and whichever is higher will have the higher DPS. And just for reference effective power is not dps. Effective power is good for comparing different stats on armors to find out what combination is best. Effective power becomes invalid when you change traits or skill rotations.

Karolis.4261:

Clumsy.6257:

Troublesome.5670:

Don’t get me started on pve……how many thieves you see running the harder pve dungeons/high level fractals??? ok, yeah, there is a reason for that.

Do you even play GW2? Most experienced parties require a minimum of 1 thief. Its incredibly rare for my usual groups to not have at least 1 thief at all times during dungeon tours. And usually we have 2 just to boost group DPS through the roof.

And as for Anet playing thieves, they don’t. Awhile back there was a livestream for the fractured update. Anet had a group of 5 trying to do the story fractal. They had 1 thief. He camped p/p the entire run and didn’t use any of his utilities throughout the entire livestream. He was a prime example of Anet’s experience with their own dungeons/fractals.

Sadly, but LFG pugging says different story (not saying that you are not correct about thiefs dps, since there are no dps calculators i will not argue). Most parties require warriors for dps, many times myself got kicked from party even before entering dungeon or asked to relog to warrior just because I play a thief. Lately was even kicked from fractal party after first boss kill, with a claim that I “don’t meet groups dps requirements” (while running full zerker 25/30/0/0/15 and ofc melee) when groups dps was much lower then average pug group dps, simply because thieves are widely considered as a weak link. Low dps ? must be because of thief.

We do have DPS calculators. You just have to spend a lot of time and somewhat enjoy that kind of math. And your comparing pugs to the meta. Pugs like warriors because its literally impossible to screw up a zerker warrior. Unfortunately the average thief’s skill is so bad that most pugs kick all thieves. Its not a class problem, its a player skill problem.

These are troll patch notes. They were posted before Anet released the recent elites.

Troublesome.5670:

Don’t get me started on pve……how many thieves you see running the harder pve dungeons/high level fractals??? ok, yeah, there is a reason for that.

Do you even play GW2? Most experienced parties require a minimum of 1 thief. Its incredibly rare for my usual groups to not have at least 1 thief at all times during dungeon tours. And usually we have 2 just to boost group DPS through the roof.

And as for Anet playing thieves, they don’t. Awhile back there was a livestream for the fractured update. Anet had a group of 5 trying to do the story fractal. They had 1 thief. He camped p/p the entire run and didn’t use any of his utilities throughout the entire livestream. He was a prime example of Anet’s experience with their own dungeons/fractals.

I can’t be certain but there’s no reason why runes of altruism wouldn’t work with healing turret although the power trade off is not worth it. With the upcoming rune rework and ferocity change, superior runes of the scholar are your best option until we actually see the rune changes. Even without being able to stay above 90% hp, scholar runes are better than ruby orbs.

pza.8024:

you prolly got a typo there, clumsy. i calculated an avg. ~3001 damage without critical hits and asc zerker gear and infusions.
1.25*2383*923,5/916=3001

You didn’t add party buffs, critical damage, or damage percents. I assumed the usuals buffs: 25 might, 25 vuln, and warrior banners. I also used full ascended weapons/armor/trinkets. I ended up with 3633 power after buffs, +75% damage (assuming 4 conditions are always on the enemy), and 2.64 critical damage (includes the 1.5 base).

Linc.6834:

yes kits do have their own base damage equivalent to an exotic pistol i believe

I recalculated with the base damage of an exotic pistol and I’m coming up with a max hit of around 28k on 916 armor with no frenzy debuff. That would make an engi’s dps the best in the game so thats not right either.